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GCC ministers discuss issues of

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FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016 • 6 SHA’BAAN 1437 • Volume 21 • Number 6795 thepeninsulaqatar @peninsulaqatar @peninsula_qatar

The Peninsula

DOHA: Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said yesterday the Arab world considers China a strate-gic partner and deep-rooted relations between both sides date back to cen-turies.

The Emir said in a speech at the opening of the seventh session of the Ministerial Meeting of China-Arab Cooperation Forum that China-Arab cooperation has achieved sustained growth and fruitful results in political, economic, security and energy sec-tors, thanks to the keenness of both sides to enhance and broaden coop-eration for the good of their people.

Foreign Minister H E Sheikh

Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani read out the Emir’s speech at the event at the Doha Sheraton.

The Emir said the Arab world has attached great importance to relations with China, matching its international rank, economic weight and efficient political role in the international arena.

He said the forum is the best evi-dence of the keenness shown by both sides to support these relations.

The Emir hoped that the forum would develop effective mechanisms to speed up Arab-Chinese cooperation, overcome obstacles, enhance the role of the public and private sectors in the Arab world and China and encourage them to build economic and invest-ment partnerships based on sound and solid foundations, taking into account common interests.

“We see in today’s meeting an

opportunity to discuss means of enhancing cooperation and coordi-nation among us to meet challenges that threaten peace, security and sta-bility in the world and reach peaceful solutions to regional and international issues, including the Arab-Israeli con-flict, the phenomenon of terrorism, extremism and issues of sustainable development,” the Emir was quoted as saying by Qatar News Agency.

He affirmed Qatar’s support to the initiative of building Silk Road Eco-nomic Belt put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping. “We agree with China that the essence of the initiative lies in peace dialogue and coopera-tion among civilisations, openness, tolerance, mutual benefit and com-mon prosperity,” the Emir said.

→ Continued on page 2

The Syrian community in Qatar organised a Solidarity stand under the theme ‘Assad is burning the country’ near Qatar Sports Club yesterday. Pic: Abdul B / The Peninsula

Emir: China key partner of Arab world

Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and other officials at the Ministerial Meeting of China-Arab Cooperation Forum at Doha Sheraton yesterday.

AFP

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia yesterday denied blocking Iranian Haj pilgrims after Tehran alleged “sabotage” by its regional rival.

The kingdom “welcomes all pil-grims from all over the world and from all nationalities and sectarian backgrounds, and does not stop any Muslim from coming,” the Ministry of Haj said in a statement carried by Al Riyadh newspaper.

But the visits must occur “within the system and guidelines that organise Haj affairs,” the minis-try said.

Earlier in the day, Iran said its nationals will miss the annual Haj, expected in early September, after the two countries severed diplo-matic ties this year.

The ministry said Saudi Arabia “did not at all ban Iranian pilgrims from coming. The ban came from the Iranian government which uses this as one of its many means to pressure the Saudi government”.

The Iranian delegation “refused to sign the agreement to finalise preparations for this year’s Haj... insisting on their demands,” the ministry said, adding “those who have banned their citizens from this right (to perform the pilgrim-age) will be held responsible for their decision in front of God and the whole world”.

Iran Culture Minister Ali Jannati told the official IRNA news agency that Iranians will miss the Haj. “The arrangements have not been put together and it’s now too late.”

The Peninsula

DOHA: All services related to the procedures for dispatching the bod-ies of people dying in Qatar to their home countries will now be avail-able under one roof.

A unified Humanitarian Services Office for completing the procedures for dispatching dead bodies outside Qatar will be officially opened on Sunday, the Ministry of Interior said yesterday.

Staff Maj. General Saad bin Jas-sim Al Khulaifi, Director-General, Public Security, will open the office at 9am, in the presence of senior

officials from the Ministry of Public Health and Hamad Medical Corpo-ration (HMC).

The office behind Hamad Gen-eral Hospital mortuary and close to Ritaj hotel behind the H R Depart-ment of HMC, will offer all services related to dispatching bodies out-side Qatar and procedures for burial in Qatar.

People will no more be required to approach various departments of the Ministry of Interior, HMC and the Ministry of Public Health in various places for completing the procedures, said a ministry statement.

Services of the new office would be extremely beneficial for the expa-triate communities in Qatar.

Emir affirmed Qatar’s support to the initiative of building Silk Road Economic Belt put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a speech read out by the Foreign Minister at the Ministerial Meeting of China-Arab Cooperation Forum.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Hamad Medical Corpo-ration’s (HMC) Home Healthcare Service (HHCS) will implement the new Clinical Information System on Sunday.

HHCS will replace its paper patient clinical records system with a new electronic Clinical Informa-tion System (CIS) as part of a planned roll-out across HMC and Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC).

Once CIS implementation is complete, all patient records will be stored and accessed electron-ically across both organisations.

The roll-out follows success-ful CIS implementation in eight HMC hospitals, paediatric emer-gency centres, dialysis centres, Bone and Joint Centre and PHCC’s health centres across the country. The CIS is a comprehensive system-wide implementation designed in col-laboration with clinicians. As this is a large project, HMC expects there will be a period of transition, during which staff and patients will adjust to the new system. Staff will need to gather more information from patients to register them in the new system and this may mean that vis-its take a little longer than usual.

The importance of an elec-tronic medical records system was set out in the National Health Strategy launched in 2011 and HMC and PHCC launched the CIS pro-gramme in 2012

Body repatriation service

goes under one roof

Home Healthcare

Services goes

online on Sunday

Saudi denies blocking Iran Haj pilgrims

AFP

BRASÍLIA: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was suspended yesterday to face an impeachment trial, ceding power to her vice president-turned-enemy Michel Temer in a political earthquake ending 13 years of leftist rule in Latin America’s biggest nation.

Temer quickly pivoted toward a more business-friendly government, naming a cabinet chosen to calm the markets after a paralysing impeach-ment battle and steer the country out of its worst recession in decades.

He tapped a respected former cen-tral bank chief, Henrique Meirelles, for the key post of finance minister, an adviser said, confirming a full cabinet

overhaul that opponents immedi-ately condemned as a throwback to an era when Brazilian politics was the exclusive domain of white males.

Defiant to the end, Brazil’s first female president denounced a “coup” aimed at driving her from power, and urged her supporters to mobilise as she braces for an impeachment trial that is set to drag on for months.

“What is at stake is respect for the ballot box, the sovereign will of the Brazilian people and the consti-tution,” Rousseff said in what could be her final address from the pres-idential palace, dressed in a white jacket and flanked by her soon-to-be-sacked ministers.

→ See also page 12

The Peninsula

DOHA: Hundreds of Syrians in Qatar took part in a solidarity stand at Qatar Sports Club premises last evening to declare support for fellow countrymen who have fallen victims to killings and brutalities committed by the Assad regime.

The event was held under the theme ‘Assad burns the country’.

Participants strongly denounced the recent bombardments in Aleppo and other cities by warplanes belong-ing to the Assad regime and its allies.

They paid tributes to the hundreds of children, women, elderly, doctors and nurses killed or injured in the attacks. The solidarity stand began at 5pm with recitation of verses from

the Holy Quran, followed by the sign-ing of the Syrian national anthem.

Addressing the gathering, Syrian Ambassador to Qatar, Nizar Al Hiraqi, praised the resistance of the Syrian peo-ple under the siege and demanded that the international community and Arab countries act decisively to stop the kill-ings and bloodshed being committed by the Assad regime for the past five years. He said the humanitarian situation in Syria has deteriorated and children, women and elderly have become tar-gets of bombings that have not spared even schools, hospitals and markets.

“ We will resist the criminal regime of Assad despite the disappointing silence of the international commu-nity,” said the ambassador.

So far, the war has led to the death of 2.3 million people and some 13 mil-lion Syrians have fled the country,

scattering all over the world. Syria has lost $269bn of its GDP and there are 12.5 million Syrians needing urgent humanitarian assistance. Al Hiraqi also praised Qatar’s stances and support to the just cause of the Syrian people.

A group of Syrian children dressed in red shirts formed into a symbolic map of Syria, holding the Syrian resist-ance flag and candles. At one point, participants lit about 300 candles.

Many Syrian activists entered the map holding a huge flag representing the Syrian revolution. The children then released balloons in the air as a sign of victory. A group of Syrian doc-tors appeared in white gowns holding stethoscopes and pictures of hospitals and other health facilities in Aleppo and other cities hit by bombings. → See also page 4

Syrian community slams Assad for ‘burning’ the country

Rousseff suspended

ball

HOME02 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

The Peninsula

DOHA: Lulu Hypermarket Group, as part of its promotion calendar, has again set the stage for Mango Festi-val under the title ‘Mango Mania’ from May 11 for a week.

The festival was inaugurated by Indian Ambassador to Qatar, Sanjiv Arora, at Lulu Hypermarket, Al Ghar-rafa, in the presence of dignitaries and senior executives from the retail indus-try and other walks of life.

Lulu outlets have made it conven-ient for the connoisseurs of this exotic fruit to taste the versatility and buy the best taste that suits their palate. The festival aims to promote India’s agricultural produce in the local com-munity and in the Middle East.

The festival is showcasing a wide variety of over 60 popular and delicious mangoes from India, Yemen, Malaysia,

Kenya, Thailand, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Ivory Coast, Puerto Rico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil, the US, Mex-ico, Sudan, Ghana and Burkina Faso; organic mangoes of historical impor-tance and mango-based products.

Mangoes are seasonal fruits; fresh mango fruit season begins in May when the rich fragrance of the fruit heralds its arrival and is usually harvested while green but perfectly mature.

Mango is the national fruit of many countries — India, Pakistan and the Philippines, and the mango tree is the national tree of Bangladesh. In Aus-tralia, where mangoes are considered a symbol of summer, the first tray of mangoes of the season is traditionally sold at an auction for charity.

The fruit is rich in pre-biotic dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals and poly-phe-nolic flavonoid antioxidant compounds. According to new research study, mango fruit has been found to protect against colon, breast, leukemia and prostate

cancers. Consumption of natural fruits rich in carotenes and potassium is good to protect body from lung and oral cav-ity cancers. Fresh mango is a very rich source of potassium.

In India and around the world, mango fruit is revered as a royal herit-age. Out of the 41 species known to exist around the world; over 1,000 varieties are available in India. Among these, over 21 are of commercial importance. The raw fruit is used for preparing pick-les, chutneys and fruit drinks.

The drink prepared from the unripe green fruit is as delicious as those prepared from ripe mangoes and is frequently consumed as an antidote to excessive heat. Both unripe and ripe, the fruit is synonymous with nutri-tional value.

Fresh stocks of mangoes from 17 countries have been imported for the festival. Leading varieties are on sale at all Lulu Hypermarket outlets at highly modest prices.

‘Mango Mania’ festival opens at all Lulu outlets

Indian Ambassador Sanjiv Arora (third right) after inaugurating the ‘Mango Mania’ annual festival at Lulu Hypermarket in Al Gharrafa, in the presence of Mohamed Althaf, Director, Lulu Group International, and other officials and guests. Salim M / The Peninsula

DeBakey students of Spanish language programme visited Aceite Restaurant at Melia Hotel and enjoyed traditional Spanish dishes (tapas and paella) and practised their Spanish skills when ordering food. DeBakey high school students must complete two years of a foreign language, and the field visit was an extension of their classroom lessons.

DeBakey students visit Spanish restaurant

By Mohammed Osman

The Peninsula

DOHA: The use of closed circuit television (CCTV) and surveillance cameras at residential houses needs to be regulated, legal researchers have recommended.

Law No. 9/2011 regulating the use of Security and Surveillance CCTV Cam-era and devices needs an executive regulation and must include regulation of CCTV in residential houses taking into account the privacy protection, security requirements and the interest of the society, said a research paper unveiled by the Center of Legal and Judicial Studies (CLJS) at the Ministry

of Justice. Highlights of the research are posted at the website of the Min-istry of Interior.

The law stipulates two conditions related to the timing of CCTV usage: first is to operate the CCTV round-the-clock and controlled from a control room.

The law also indicates that all records need to be saved without any changes for 120 days in order to be sub-mitted to the authority concerned if needed, and deleted thereafter.

The law requires all public areas in compounds and residential towers such as pool areas, clubhouses, streets, sidewalks, underground parking, and boundary walls to be monitored on camera to comply with the law.

Researchers explained that the

law underlines that all CCTV content should be destroyed or deleted with-out keeping any part of the records in any form after the 120 days stipu-lated in the law.

According to the research paper the law also stipulates that the number and locations of CCTVs need to be identified by the authority concerned in order to meet the purpose of their installations.

It has been also made mandatory by the same to the owners of insti-tutions using CCTVs to put a note in Arabic and English in visible place mentioning that the enterprise is mon-itored by surveillance cameras.

Inspectors from the competent authority have the right to check that the CCTVs are operating properly, and

they are in the right places and types, and models of the devices meet the specification and requirements set up by the law.

The individual’s privacy is also highlighted by the law and opera-tors are not allowed to interfere in the individual’s affairs and their families, accommodation and correspondences, in addition to prohibition of content transfer unless it is required by author-ity concerned.

The research paper was prepared by a group of trainees at the CLJS under the title “The legal framework of the use of surveillance cameras in Qatar”.

They prepared the paper on the occasion of their graduation as the 14th batch of new legal researchers run by CLJS of the Ministry of Justice.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Career Fair (QCF) has opened registration for its Career Guidance Stakeholders Platform 2016.

The annual event aims to promote innovation and encourage exchange of knowledge, research findings and best practices. The meeting will take place on Monday from 8.30am to 2.30pm at Qatar National Convention Cen-tre (QNCC).

Organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, the platform is for Qatari youth and others with a stake in career guidance, including parents, career advisers, researchers, practitioners, policymakers and decision-makers.

The theme this year, ‘Evi-dence-Based Insights Into Strategic Collaboration Among Career Guid-ance Stakeholders In Qatar’, represents opportunities and constraints high-lighted through the findings and

recommendations of three research conducted by QCF in 2015.

The programme will include key note addresses, presentation of evi-dence-based insights into strategic collaboration, expert panel discus-sions and four breakout sessions on ‘Development Of Career Guidance Policies And Strategies’; ‘Building The Organisational Capacity Of Career Guidance Centres’; ‘Professionalisa-tion Of Career Guidance Practices’; and ‘Integration Of Information Technology Into Career Guidance Practices’. QCF is a member of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF). Reflecting QF’s commitment to sup-port Qatar’s sustainable development, the event serves as a tool to support the personal, social, educational and economic success of young Qataris and Qatari society, contributing to Qatar’s Education and Training Sec-tor Strategy. Applicants can register on website (http://www.qatarcareer-fair.com.qa/forms/2016/).

The Peninsula

DOHA: The Arabic Heritage Pro-gramme at Georgetown Qatar University (GU-Q) held a roundtable on teaching Arabic in the context of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL) and comparing it to other references and frameworks, such as the standards of the American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).

The roundtable hosted four ses-sions, featuring experts.

Dr Yehia Abdelmobdy Mohamed, Assistant Professor of Arabic, GU-Q, and organiser of the roundtable, said discussion started by comparing ACTFL

to the European framework with regard to its historical and cultural contexts, vision, goals and description of stand-ards and linguistic levels.

The roundtable also highlighted CEFRL’s linguistic levels and skills, designing curricula, tests and assess-ment tools according to the framework.

Some papers during discussion elaborated on unique characteristics of the Arabic language and its cultural ingredients. Types of students com-monly known as ‘Heritage Learners’ were also discussed.

Panel moderators included Profes-sor Mahmoud Al Ashiri and Professor Hany Fazza. Professor Abbas Al Tonsi, Director of the Arabic Programme, initiated discussion with a speech on the development of GU-Q’s Arabic

Language and Culture Programme. He also spoke about the goals

of the roundtable and theoretical frameworks for teaching Arabic to Arabs and non-Arabs. The final ses-sion discussed Arabic pedagogy and theoretical frameworks in light of pre-vious panel discussions. Participants recommended continuing such discus-sions to come up with tangible results and progress in terms of the assess-ment tools and proficiency tests.

The event was part of the Arabic Heritage Programme’s cultural and academic activities. Initiated in 2007, the programme teaches Arabic lan-guage, culture and literature to Arabs and non-Arabs. The roundtable’s first edition last year discussed teaching Arabic language in GCC universities.

QCF opens registration for

Career Guidance

Stakeholders Platform

The Peninsula

DOHA: The Ministry of Economy and Commerce has announced a one-month administrative closure of a beauty centre in Al Markhiya for displaying and selling expired hair products.

The closure follows inspection campaigns to monitor the market and commercial activities, prevent price manipulation and expose viola-tions pertaining to counterfeit goods

and non-conformance with standard specifications. Inspectors fined the centre and ordered it closed in line with Article 7 of Law No. 8 of 2008, which prohibits suppliers of goods from selling, displaying, offering or advertising corrupt or fraudulent products. Products are considered corrupt if they do not conform with standards specifications, are unusable or have expired. The administrative closure is published on the ministry’s website and two newspapers at the centre’s expense in line with Article 3 of the law on consumer protection.

Beauty centre shut down

GU-Q organises roundtable on teaching Arabic

Continued from page 1

In a speech at the opening ses-sion of the forum, President Xi said China would be fully prepared to exert joint efforts with Arab states to build the new economic belt and silk road with firm steps according to consultation, partnership and shar-ing between both sides to open wider and more comprehensive horizons for Sino-Arab strategic cooperation.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi read out the speech in which Presi-dent Xi said in 2014 he had initiated a Sino-Arab partnership and the estab-lishment of the economic belt and silk road and that the initiative has found positive response from Arab states.

The President said this round of the ministerial meeting will dis-cuss in depth Sino-Arab cooperation in the building of the belt and the road, strengthen strategic coopera-tion and explore areas and projects

of priority for collective cooperation for the next two years.

In his opening address, Sheikh Mohamed stressed the need for inten-sifying efforts and coordination in all issues of common interest, prima-rily development, climate, nuclear energy, dialogue of civilisations, and reform and development of the United Nations.

“The joint will of Arab countries and China to achieve a successful model of South-South cooperation makes this forum a strong platform to accelerate sustainable develop-ment at the national level of both sides through integrative work, which keeps pace with efforts to promote the human element; capacity-building, transfer of expertise, technology and capital; increasing trade volume and creating investment opportunities without losing sight of the cultural side,” he added.

Trade volume between Arab countries and China totalled $250bn

in 2015, he said. Sheikh Mohamed praised China’s positions in support of Arab causes, including the Palestinian cause, and hoped Beijing’s contin-ued support to Arab causes to reach the desired peace in the Middle East within the framework of principles and provisions of international law, the UN Charter and relevant Secu-rity Council resolutions that affirm the rights of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state, with its capital in Jerusalem. He said the draft Doha declaration includes topics that showed a unified vision to serve common interests.

The Foreign Minister said the implementation programme for China-Arab Cooperation Forum for 2016-2018 has an ambitious plan to advance relations between both sides and provides opportunity to build more joint strategies for coop-eration in the political, economic, cultural and scientific sectors.

Sheikh Mohammed said in a

joint press conference with Wang and Arab League Secretary-General Dr Nabil El Araby that the forum was part of ongoing meetings between Arab states and the China within the framework of continuous develop-ment of relations.

Wang said his country will pro-vide special loans worth $15bn in the Middle East to support Arab projects in the oil and gas, automotive indus-tries, building materials, renewable energy and other sectors.

He said both sides agreed to continue to strengthen the forum mechanism, and implementation of what contained in the executive pro-gramme of cooperation in 36 areas.

Dr El Araby said that the Doha declaration and the executive pro-gramme serve interests of both sides, particularly activities and events to be held over the next two years to deepen cooperation in energy, technology, investment and infra-structure fields.

China to give $15bn to back Arab projects

Call to regulate use of CCTV cameras at homes

ISLAM 03FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

By Shaykh Abdul Fattaah Abu

Ghuddah

Recognise the status of the elderly and give them due respect. When walk-ing with them, walk slightly behind, to their right. Let them enter and exit

first. If you meet them, greet them properly and respectfully. If you discuss something with them, let them speak first, and listen to them attentively and graciously. If the conversa-tion involves debate, you should remain polite, calm, and kind-hearted and you should lower your voice. Never forget to remain respectful.

Let me review with you some of the Proph-et’s sayings and traditions that uphold these polite manners. Imam Bukhari and Muslim reported that Abdullah bin Sahl made a trip with Mahisa bin Masoud in Zayed to Khaibar. When they were to about to return, Mahisa found Abdullah had been murdered. He went to the Prophet (peace be upon him) with his older brother, Howaisa and the victim’s brother, Abdul Rahman bin Sahl. Mahisa who witnessed the incident started to talk, but the Prophet (PBUH) said, ‘the elder, the elder.’ At that, How-aisa spoke and then Mahisa.

Another story emphasises this behaviour further. When he was young, Abdullah bin Omar was at a gathering of the Prophet (PBUH) and his senior companions like Abu Bakr and his father. The Prophet (PBUH) asked his com-panions, ‘Tell what is the tree that does not shed its leaves and which is like the Muslim.’ The companions started suggesting names of desert trees. Abdullah bin Omar thought it was the date-palm. Since he was the youngest, and seeing Abu Bakr and Omar silent, he shied away and said nothing. The Prophet (PBUH) told his companions: ‘It is the palm tree’. Later, Abdullah told his father that he knew the right answer but shied away. Omar said to his son ‘For you to have said it right then, would have been worth a lot to me.’

Imam Ahmad, Al Hakim and Al Tabarani reported that ‘Ubada bin Al Samit stated that the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said: ‘Who-ever does not respect our elders is not one of us.’ Another version reported: ‘Whoever does not respect our elders, is not compassionate to our youth, and does not give our scholars due honour, he is not one of us.’

This should not be taken to belittle the youth or look down on them. Imam Bukhari reported that Ibn Abbas narrated that Omar was allow-ing him to attend his court with seniors who attended Badr. Some of them felt uneasy and asked, ‘Why are you permitting him to attend when he is as young as our children?’ Omar replied, ‘He is [knowledgeable] as you well know.’ Another version elaborates that Omar asked the seniors to explain Sura Al Fatiha and only Abdullah in Abbas explained it correctly.

Ibn Abbas said, ‘I thought he asked the question just to demonstrate my knowledge to them.’

The Messenger of Allah ((PBUH)) taught the youth the manners of companionship and the custom of giving precedence to elders. Al Bukhari and Muslim reported that the hon-oured companion Malik bin Al Hwaireth (RA) said: ‘I was with a youth group that visited the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) in Madinah for twenty nights. The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) was very kind and compassionate. He sensed that we might have missed our families back home and he asked us about whom we had left behind. When we informed him, he said: ‘Go back to your families, live with them, teach them Islam and tell them of the good deeds. At the times of prayer, let one of you call the Azan, and have your eldest lead the prayer.’ ‘

The Prophet ((PBUH)) specified in this par-ticular case that the eldest should lead the prayers since they were equal in their knowl-edge and learning. Being older in such a case merits leading the prayers. If a person is more knowledgeable, then he should lead the prayer since knowledge is an honor higher than age as could be seen in the Hadiths on this subject.

If the prayers were offered at a house, the host is entitled to lead it. Out of respect, he may request a person who is more knowledgeable, older or more prominent. If the guest declines, the host should not hesitate to lead the prayers. Imam Ahmad reported in his Musnad that Abdul-lah ibn Masoud visited Abu Musa Al-Ashari. When it was time to pray, Abu Musa asked Ibn Masoud, ‘Please lead the prayers since you are older and have more knowledge.’ Ibn Masoud said, ‘ No, you lead the prayer. This is your house and praying area. You should lead the prayer.’ Abu Musa did lead the prayer then.

Give precedence to the elderly or to digni-taries, ahead of anyone else. After that, you may proceed with those on their right if you want to follow the practice of the Prophet ((PBUH)). The evidence supporting this manner in addi-tion to the two Hadiths mentioned above, is illustrated in many Hadiths, some of which are cited below:

Imam Muslim reported in his Sahih in the Chapter on the Manners and Rules of Eating and Drinking, that Huzaifa bin Al-Yaman (RA) said: ‘Whenever we were invited to a meal with the Messenger of Allah ((PBUH)), we would not reach the food with our hands before he reached for it.’

To emphasize the importance of these manners, Imam Al Nawawi, in his book Riyad Al Salihîn, cited a large collection of Hadith and devoted a whole chapter to the subject of ‘Respecting Scholars, the Elderly and the Dignitaries. Giving them Precedence and the Best Seat. Acknowledging their Preeminence.’ In the following paragraphs, I will reiterate some of these. Allah said in the Quran: ‘Are those equal, those who know and those who do not know? It is those who possess under-standing that receive admonition.’

Imam Muslim reported that ‘Uqba bin ‘Amr Al Badri Al Ansari (RA) stated that the Prophet ((PBUH)) said: ‘Those who are best at reciting the Quran should lead a group’s prayer. If they are equal, then those most versed in the Sunna should lead; if they are equal, then a person who migrated first [from Makka to Madina] should lead; if they had migrated at the same time, then an elder should lead.’

Imam Muslim reported that Ibn Mas’od said that the Prophet ((PBUH)) said: ‘Let your wise and mature pray immediately behind

me, then those who trail behind them, and then those who trail behind them.’

Imam Al Bukhari reported that Jabir bin Abdullah (RA) said: ‘After the battle of Uhud, the Prophet ((PBUH)) buried two martyrs in one grave. He asked, ‘which one memorized more of the Quran? ‘Upon being told which it was, he laid him first facing Qibla.’

In addition, Muslim reported that Abdu-allah bin Omar (RA) stated that the Prophet (PBUH)) said: ‘I dreamt I was brushing my teeth with Sewak when two men approached me. I handed the Sewak to the younger but was instructed to hand it to the older. Accordingly, I handed it to the older.’

Imam Abu Dawood reported as a fair Hadith that Abu Müsa Al Ash’ari (RA) stated that the Prophet ((PBUH)) said: ‘Part of paying hom-age to Allah is to respect an elder whose hair has turned gray, or a [regular] reader of the Quran, or a just ruler.’

This desired behaviour towards elders is so important that the Prophet (PBUH) made it a part of respecting and venerating Allah. To ignore it is a gross misbehaviour. At its fore-front comes respect and reverence of the just ruler. A revered poet enumerated a group of rules and stipulated that whoever broke these rules should be slapped on the neck. The eight rules are:

Abu Dawood and Al-Hakim reported as an authentic Hadith that Maimün bin Abi Shabîb recounted that a beggar stopped the Prophet’s wife Aisha (RA) and she gave him a piece of dry bread. At another time, a properly-dressed, well-groomed man asked her for food. She let him sit and offered him a meal. When asked about that, she replied that the Prophet (PBUH)) said: ‘Treat people according to their status.’

Imam Al-Nawawi concluded this chapter by citing a Hadith as reported by Al-Bukhari and Muslim in which Samura bin Jundub (RA) said: ‘Though I was a young child at the time of the Prophet, I used to listen to what he said and memorize it. Nothing prevents me from narrating my knowledge except the presence of men older than me.’

In conclusion, the Sunnah is to start accord-ing to the following order of merits: age, knowledge, social status, lineage, veterans of Jihad, generosity or similar virtues. Fur-ther, the Sunnah of hospitality, is to start with the most prominent, then to move to those on the right in order to harmonize the custom of starting on the right with the custom of start-ing with people of virtue.

Some people who misunderstand the real meaning of some texts of the Sunnah claim that the Sunnah is to start with those on your right whoever they are. They base this on Hadiths that stress starting from the right. But this is only true when the group is in all ways equal in character, status or age. However, if one of them is distinguished with a merit such as old age, then the Sunnah is to start with this person.

In his book Al Bayan wa Tahsîl Imam Ibn Rushd said: ‘As a rule, if the status of those present is equal, one should start on the right, as with every desirable act. However, if a scholar, an honourable person or an elder is present, the Sunnah is to start with such a person and then move to his or her right in a counter clockwise fashion. The Messenger of Allah was offered milk mixed with water while a Bedouin was sitting on his right, and to his left, was sitting Abu Bakr. The Prophet drank some and handed it over to the Bedouin saying, ‘From the right, then to the right.’

Do not proceed to the left in an anti-clock-wise fashion, even if the person to the left is of a higher status, unless those on the right agree to pass their turn. The Messenger ((PBUH)) was sitting with elders on his left and a young man on his right. He was brought a drink. After drink-ing, he asked the young man: ‘Would you give me the permission to pass it to those? The boy answered: ‘By Allah no. I would not favour any-one with my share of your drink.’ The Prophet willingly put the drink in the child hand indi-cating that it is his right.

The Indian scholar, Al Mubarkfuri, in his treatise on explaining Jami` Al Tirmizi elabo-rated on this. When commenting on the Hadith, ‘the server should be the last one to drink,’

Al-Mubarkfuri said, ‘This indicates that the server should delay his drink until all the guests are served. The same applies when fruits are being served. The most notable should be served first, and then those of the right until every-one is served.’

Al Minawi in his explanation of Sharh Al-Shamail commented on the previous Hadith of Ibn Abbas: ‘This implies that the Sunna is to continue serving drinks and food with those on the right of the most noble person even if that person happened to be less important than the person on the left.’

A Hadith in Sahih Muslim reinforces this rule of serving the elder or the most noble first, and then those on his right. Abdullah bin Bosur said, ‘The Prophet visited my father and we served him with food made of dates and but-ter. Then he was brought dates, and he ate it and threw the pit using his middle and forefin-gers. Then he was brought a drink from which he drank and passed it to his right.’

The words ‘he was brought a drink’ clearly indicates that he was served first before those on his right since he was the noblest person present, and that then he passed it to those on his right. It indicates that they started with the Prophet out of respect and not because he asked for a drink. The preceding words ‘he was brought dates’ reinforces this understand-ing. It is very unlikely that the Prophet, while a guest, will ask his host for food and then for drink. It could be argued that this is a possi-bility. Indeed, it is a hypothetical possibility that lacks evidence or probability.

An important aspect of proper manners is that some people extend help and hospitality to strangers out of faith and pure humanity. If it becomes known that the person needing help has additional virtues such as being a scholar or notable person, they will go an extra step in their generosity and providing help. This is undoubtedly evidence of right instinct and faith which motivated such gestures.

Therefore, the general rule is to start from the right if those present are equal in merit. How-ever, if there is a person who is well-known for a respectable trait, then start with that person.

If we were to follow the alleged rule that hosts ought to start with the person who hap-pened to be on their right, then we could start with a young child, a servant, a driver, or a guard, at the expense of more prominent guests such as a dignitary, a revered scholar, a notable, a parent, a grandparent, or an uncle. Would it be acceptable by the Shariah and its refined manners to forsake honouring and starting with persons of character, in favour of start-ing with a child, a servant, a driver and then proceed to persons of higher status? Also, it is possible that the ten persons or more are sitting on the right side before the most hon-ourable person. To reach them at the end does not befit their status and may offend them. Islamic manners definitely do not accept this irregular conduct. However, if someone asks for a drink, they have the right to the request before anybody else regardless of age or sta-tus, and the round should proceed with those on their right. If this person notices someone older or of higher status showing desire for the drink, he, or she may willingly give up his, or her right in favour of that person. When pre-ferring others to yourself, you have practiced the Islamic manner of unselfishness, and you will achieve great virtue, and honour and gain great rewards.

http://haqislam.org/

Social manners with the elderly

By Abdulrahman Al Sheha

Allah, the Almighty, says: “Allah commands justice, the doing of good, and liberality to kith and kin, and He forbids all

shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you that ye may receive admonition.” (Qur’an, 16:90)

Justice and fairness are commanded and required in all situations, when one is happy and satisfied, and when one is upset and unsatisfied, with Muslims and with non-Muslims alike. Allah, the Almighty, says: “O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for Allah, as witnesses

to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just, that is, next to Piety; and fear Allah. For Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do.” (Qur’an, 5:8)

Islam enjoins altruism and urges Muslims to practice it. Philanthropy and benevolence are some of the results of altruism, if practiced by the mem-bers of the society. Allah, the Almighty says: “But those who, before them, had homes (in Madinah) and had adopted the faith, show their affection to such as came to them for refuge, and entertain no desire in their hearts for things given to the (latter); but give them preference over themselves, even though poverty was their (own lot). And those saved from the covetousness of their own souls; they are the ones that achieve prosperity.” (Quran, 59:9)

Islam urges to maintain righteous company. Muslims are advised to stay aloof from bad company. Allah’s Mes-senger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is reported to have said, The example of good and evil com-panions is like that of a person who is carrying musk and the blacksmith who is blowing his blower over the fire to get it going. A musk carrier would either give you a bit of it, or you may

buy a little from him or at the least, you would smell good perfume from him. As for the blacksmith who is blowing his blower over the fire you may either burn your clothes (if you sit by him), or else you would be disturbed with the sparkles of his fire, or the least (harm you may get) is to get disturbed with the bad odor coming from him (and his place). (Bukhari and Muslim)

Islam enjoins to assist people in making up better relationships. This is especially so when there is a rift in the relationship between people. Allah, the Almighty says: “In most of their secret talks there is no good; but if one exhorts to a deed of charity or justice or conciliation between men, (secrecy is permissible): To him who does this, seeking the good pleasure of Allah, We shall soon give a reward of the highest (value).” (Qur’an, 4:114)

Islam suggests maintaining a good character and morals. Good morals and virtues are essential for a bet-ter society. Allah’s Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is reported to have said, Among the best believers are the persons with the best of morals and characteristics and those who are most kind to their family members. (Tirmidhi)

Islam enjoins on Muslims to offer

their help and assistance to others free of charge and for the pleasure of Allah Almighty. Allah’s Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is reported to have said, Do favors for those who deserve to be done for them, and also for those who do not deserve to be done for them. If the doer did the favor for those who deserve it (and they are worthy of it) it is fine and good, and if not, the doer (of the favor) him-self is one of those who are worthy for favors. (Tirmidhi)

Islam enjoins on Muslims to be gen-erous. Generosity brings people closer to each other and enables the generous to gain the love and affection of others. Allah’s Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is reported to have said, “Allah, the Almighty, loves two traits: To be good to others and to be generous to them.” Similarly, Allah, the Almighty, hates two traits: To be mean to others and to be miser to peo-ple. On the other hand, If Allah, the Almighty, favors a person, He would employ him to assist others achieve their goals and fulfill their needs. There is criterion, however, for generosity in Islam. Allah says: “Make not thy hand tied (like a niggard’s) to thy neck, nor stretch it forth to its utmost reach, so that thou become blameworthy and

destitute.” (Qur’an, 17:29)On being generous toward others,

Allah, the Almighty, says: “And render to the kindred their due rights, as (also) to those in want, and to the wayfarer; but squander not (your wealth) in the manner of a spendthrift. Verily spend-thrifts are brothers of the evil ones; and the evil one is to his Lord (Him-self) ungrateful.” (Qur’an, 17:26-27)

Muslims to be kind and benevolent to others. The Prophet (peace be upon him) is reported to have said, “Allah, the Almighty, would be (extremely) kind and merciful to those who are kind and merciful to others. Be kind to those on earth, the One in Heaven would be kind and merciful to you.” (Tirmidhi and Abu Dawood)

Islam commands Muslims to be kind and accommodating to oth-ers and encourages people to do so. Allah’s Messenger (peace and bless-ings of Allah be upon him) is reported to have said, Being kind to others is good in every matter and if kindness is removed (from the hearts of people), the situation becomes worst. (Muslim)

Islam enjoins on Muslims to hide omissions of others, and help each other to achieve their decent and honest goals.

Allah’s Messenger (peace and bless-ings of Allah be upon him) is reported

to have said, “Whosoever alleviates a believer’s hardship of this world, Allah, the Almighty, would alleviate his hardship and difficulty of the Day of Judgment. Whosoever eases the terms on (a financially) stranded person, Allah, the Almighty, would ease his difficul-ties in both this world and the Hereafter. Whosoever hides the defects of a Muslim in this world, Allah, the Almighty, would hide the defects of that person both in this world and in the Hereafter. Allah, the Almighty, would continue to assist a slave-servant so long as such person is extending his help and assistance to his Muslim brethren. (Muslim)

Islam enjoins upon patience. Peo-ple are encouraged to be patient in order to perform their religious duties. People are equally urged and encour-aged to practice patience in order to avoid all evils. Allah, the Almighty, says: “Now await in patience the com-mand of thy Lord; for verily thou art in Our eyes; and celebrate the praises of thy Lord the while thou stand-est forth.” (Qur’an, 52:48) Islam also urges and encourages Muslims to be patient on what they have been pre-destined for such as poverty, hunger, lack of resources, terminal illness or else, and fear.

muslimummah.org

The Messenger of Allah ((PBUH)) taught the youth the manners of companionship and the custom of giving precedence to elders.

Allah enjoins us to be kind on earthIslam enjoins to assist people in making up better relationships. This is especially so when there is a rift in the relationship between people.

Kuwait’s Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al Mubarak Al Sabah (right), accompanied by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, reviews a guard of honour in Tokyo, yesterday. The Kuwaiti Prime Minister is on a three-day visit to Japan.

An Arab-Israeli man holds a Palestinian flag during a protest to mark the right of return for refugees who fled their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, at a village near Rahat in southern Israel, yesterday. The 1948 war followed the creation of Israel.

Kuwait PM in Tokyo

Homeland dream

GULF / MIDDLE EAST04 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Agencies

HADHRAMAUT, YEMEN: At least six soldiers were killed yesterday in a suicide bombing in Yemen’s southern city of Al Mukalla, accord-ing to a military source.

A bomber rammed his explo-sives-laden vehicle into a military checkpoint manned by army troops in al-Mukalla, the source told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking with the media. “Six soldiers were killed and 15 others injured in the attack,” the source said. The Daesh militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. In an online state-ment, the group said that one of its members had detonated his vehi-cle near government troops in the southern port city. Al Mukalla was held by Al Qaeda militants until last month when Yemeni army forces launched an offensive to recapture the city from the terrorist group.

Somalia protests against plan to close campMOGADISHU: Somalia protested yesterday against Kenyan plans to close a refugee camp packed with hundreds of thousands of Somali citi-zens, saying the move would increase the threat of militancy in the region.

Kenya had announced a day ear-lier it was drawing up a timetable to shut Dadaab camp, shrugging off pleas to reconsider the move by the United Nations and rights groups.

The vast settlement on the Ken-yan side of the Somali border houses about 350,000 Somalis and other refugees taking shelter from con-flicts raging across the region.

AP

DAMASCUS: Al Qaeda fighters and other ultraconservative Sunni insurgents seized a predominantly Alawite village in central Syria yes-terday, sparking fears of sectarian violence as families from the village were reported missing by activists.

Syrian Prime Minister Wael Al Halqi said “terrorists” were killing residents of the village of Zaara, pre-viously controlled by the government. Syrian state media said insurgents had looted and destroyed homes.

Clashes continued into the after-noon as government or allied Russian aircraft pounded rebel positions, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that seven militants were killed. The Local Coor-dination Committees, an activist-run network, said the insurgents killed over 30 pro-government fighters in the clashes. Ahrar Al Sham, an ultra-conservative Sunni militant group, led the assault on Zaara, along with the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian fran-chise, which often fights alongside opposition factions. The Observatory,

which covers both sides of the conflict through a network of local activists, said families disappeared from Zaara after the militants took over.

Syria’s conflict began with peace-ful protests against President Bashar Assad but escalated into a civil war after a brutal government crackdown and the rise of an armed insurgency. It became increasingly sectarian with the rise of Sunni insurgent groups and the arrival of Shia militants from across the region to fight alongside Assad’s government.

Assad and his family are Alaw-ites, an offshoot of Shiaism, while the majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims. Both the government and the opposition claim to represent the entire country with its various religious minorities, but armed groups on both sides have carried out sectarian attacks. The Inter-national Committee for the Red Cross had to cancel a 24-truck aid convoy to the town of Al Houla, near Zaara, cit-ing security concerns. The ICRC did not say whether it was related to the clashes in Zaara.

It was to be the first aid deliv-ery to the town since March, when aid reached 70,000 residents in the area for the first time since May 2015.

Another aid convoy by the ICRC, in conjunction with the United Nations and the SARC, was also turned back outside Daraya, a suburb of Damascus besieged by pro-government forces.

ICRC spokesman Pawel Krzysiek, who was travelling with the convoy, said it wasn’t allowed through the last government checkpoint.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujar-ric told reporters that the UN special envoy and the UN resident humani-tarian coordinator “decided to abort the mission to Daraya because of the removal of nutrition items for chil-dren, other than vaccines, from the UN convoy at the last checkpoint.”

AFP

TUNIS: The United States yesterday delivered military hardware to Tunisia to help the North African country hit by several Islamic State group attacks secure its borders and battle terrorism.

Light aircraft, jeeps and communications systems were part of the equipment handed over at a ceremony attended by US official Amanda Dory and Tunisian Defence Minister Farhat Horchani.

Dory, the US deputy assistant secretary of defence for African affairs, said the equipment was part of a $20m package to bolster Tunisia’s military capabilities.

“I’m very pleased that the United States is able to provide Tunisia with surveillance air-crafts that will improve Tunisia’s ability to locate terrorists who attempt to infiltrate your bor-ders,” she said. “These aircrafts will be able to provide advanced warning to ground forces employing advanced digital communications technology to coordinate rapid introduction utilising these new jeep vehicles or other exist-ing assets.”

Horchani, who took delivery of the equip-ment at the Aouina air base near Tunis, said the “sophisticated” hardware would “strengthen our capacity to protect our land and maritime bor-ders in the face of regional security challenges”.

Tunisia was hit by a series of deadly IS attacks last year on foreign holidaymakers and security forces that killed dozens and dealt a devastat-ing blow to the tourism industry, a mainstay of its economy.

Officials regularly voice concern about the situation in neighbouring Libya, where IS has built a bastion in the coastal city of Sirte which it overran last year and turned into a training camp for militants.

Tunisia has built a 200km barrier that stretches about half the length of its border with Libya in an attempt to prevent militants from infiltrating.

“The surveillance capability will increase the government of Tunisia’s awareness of activ-ity along your borders, it is another example of how the United states and Tunisia cooperate to gather additional information about potential threats,” said Dory.

Last year the United States designated Tuni-sia a major non-Nato ally.

Qaeda and rebels seize Alawite village in Syria

US gives Tunisia military hardware to bolster security

AP

CAIRO: Egyptian activists took to social media yesterday to support an online campaign demanding the release of four detained members of a satirical street group whose selfie-style video clips mocked the country’s general-turned-president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

The activists posted phone-wield-ing selfies on Facebook, entitled “does a mobile phone camera rattle you?” and directed at Al Sisi.

The campaign comes after police on Monday arrested four members of the group Awlad Al Shawarea, or “Street children.” A fifth member was arrested over the weekend but was later released on bail. The performers

are facing several charges, includ-ing inciting terror attacks and street protests as well as insulting state institutions.

Recent clips by the group were entitled “Al Sisi, my president, made things worse,” and “leave” — a chant that was popular during the 2011 upris-ing that forced autocrat Hosni Mubarak to step down.

There were also ones mock-ing the president’s habit of ending speeches with “Long live Egypt!” and his recent reference to advice by his late mother to “never to covet what belongs to others.”

Beside activists, famous Egyp-tian satirist Bassem Youssef — often described as the Jon Stewart of Egypt — took part in the online campaign. Youssef’s show was taken off the air

when freedoms significantly dimin-ished after then-military-chief Al Sisi ousted Egypt’s first freely elected leader, the Islamist Mohammed Mursi, in July 2013.

“If you truly are not scared of any-one, let them go free,” Youssef posted, referring to the performers and alluding to Al Sisi’s recent repeated assertions that no one scares him.

Egyptian actor Amr Waked, who played the rich Arab chieftain in the widely acclaimed 2012 movie “Salmon Fishing in The Yemen” also took part in the campaign.

Al Sisi took office in June 2014, nearly a year after Mursi’s ouster. He has since overseen the arrest of thou-sands of Mursi’s supporters as well as scores of pro-democracy activists who fueled the 2011 uprising.

Under his rule, many freedoms won as a result of the uprising have been eroded while a personality cult around Al Sisi has emerged.

But the president has been devot-ing most of his time trying to revive the economy, initiating a series of ambitious infrastructure projects, while also battling a tenuous Islamic militant insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

The Egyptian leader has recently faced a wave of protests over his announcement last month that his government intended to surrender control over two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia.

The protests were met with one of the biggest rounds of arrests in the last two years.

AFP

DAMASCUS: An aid convoy was refused entry to Syria’s Daraya yes-terday, the Red Cross said, dashing hopes for the first such delivery since regime forces began a siege of the rebel-held town in 2012.

A truce in Syria’s battleground city Aleppo expired, meanwhile, with no new last-minute prolongation after it had been extended twice through last-minute intervention by Moscow and Washington.

World powers are to meet in Vienna next week to try to push faltering peace talks towards ending a five-year con-flict that has killed more than 270,000 people.

In the Damascus region, an aid convoy was refused entry to Daraya, which has been besieged by govern-ment forces since November 2012.

“We urge the responsible authorities

to grant us access to Daraya, so we can return with desperately-needed food & medicines” outside the capital, said the International Committee of the Red Cross.

A five-truck convoy organised by the ICRC, the United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent had been due to deliver baby milk and medical and school supplies.

“Beyond allowing this initial con-voy through, the ICRC and its partners need concerned authorities to let it provide other essentials such as food,” said the ICRC.

A UN spokesman said it had decided not to go ahead with the convoy after “nutrition items” were removed from the convoy.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura and the resident humanitarian coordina-tor had “decided to abort the mission to Daraya because of the removal of nutrition items for children other than vaccines from the UN convoy at the last

checkpoint,” said Stephane Dujarric.One civilian died in regime shell-

ing in Daraya on Thursday afternoon, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. In the northern city of Aleppo, emergency workers reported no deaths in eastern rebel-held areas since the local truce expired on Wednesday night.

But two civilians including a woman died in sniper fire on the divided city’s regime-controlled west, said the Observatory. That truce came after a spike in violence that killed more than 300 civilians on both sides of the city last month.

The meeting next Tuesday between world powers in Austria comes as jihad-ists have dealt a series of setbacks to President Bashar Al Assad’s troops in the country’s centre. In Hama province, Syria’s Al-Qaeda affiliate — Al-Nusra Front — and its allies Thursday captured Zara village, where most residents hail from the same offshoot of Shiite Islam as the president, the Observatory said.

In nearby Homs, also central Syria, fighting has raged near the Shaer gas field — one of the biggest in the prov-ince — after the Islamic State group seized it from the regime last week.

IS also cut a main regime supply road between Palmyra and Homs on Tuesday, just weeks after the regime recaptured the historic city.

Assad’s troops retook Palmyra with support from Russian air strikes on March 27 -- an achievement his regime celebrated with concerts in its ancient amphitheatre last week.

Al Nusra and the IS are not included in a fragile nationwide ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels implemented in late February to set the ground for peace talks.

The last round of peace talks in Geneva reached a deadlock in April when the main opposition group sus-pended its participation over mounting violence and lack of humanitarian access.

Aid convoy to besieged Daraya refused entry

Activists campaign for street performers’ release

AFP

RIYADH: A Saudi woman has been sentenced to six years in prison for “acts of sedition” including pledg-ing allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group, newspapers reported yesterday.

A court in Riyadh issued the sentence against the unnamed 27-year-old on Wednesday, the Saudi Gazette said.

But Al Hayat daily reported that the judge decided to keep her in jail for only three years after she expressed “regret” for her “acts of sedition” and suspended the rest of the sentence. She will, however, also be banned from travelling abroad for six years, it added.

The woman was convicted of pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State group which has seized ter-ritory in Iraq and Syria.

IS has claimed attacks in Saudi Arabia against members of the minority Shiite community and the Saudi security forces.

She posted messages on Twit-ter supporting a deadly attack on security forces, and hung posters at a mosque and on utility poles to seek the release of a suspected mil-itant, Saudi Gazette said.

She also reportedly called for disobedience against the kingdom’s rulers. Saudi Arabia is part of the US-led coalition bombing IS in Iraq and Syria. Saudi political and reli-gious leaders routinely denounce IS attacks — at home and abroad —as contrary to Islam.

The verdict against the woman coincided with an upsurge of secu-rity incidents in Saudi Arabia over the past week. Saudi police on Mon-day shot dead a suspected jihadist in the western province of Taif a day after one of their colleagues was killed in a shootout, the inte-rior ministry said.

Saudi woman sentenced to 6 years in jail for IS support

Ahrar Al Sham, a militant group, led the assault on Zaara, along with the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, which often fights alongside opposition factions.

Six die in suicide bombing in Yemen’s Mukalla

Collapsed stone walls cover the ground at Kumamoto Castle in Kumamoto, Japan. The city government allowed the media to enter the castle for the first time since a series of powerful earthquakes hit Kumamoto Prefecture and neighbouring regions.

Quake damage

ASIA / PHILIPPINES 05FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Warning of Subsea Diving Works Offshore Qatar from 13th May to 12th June 2016

In pursuant to and under directives from the Department of Marine Regulations, Ministry of Transport and Communications, State of Qatar, this announcement is to inform all the vessels, mariners, and fishermen that Flow Assurance Project (Offshore) owned by RasGas Company Limited intends to carry out Pipeline Route Free Span Correction and Survey in the location bounded by the coordinates shown in the diagram below.

The works will be performed by a DP2 Vessel “MEO RANGER”, will utilize Free Span Correction and Survey techniques and sonar equipment within the marked operations area shown below. All Ships, Fishermen and Mariners are advised mindful of this operation and to avoid interfering with the vessel activities.

RasGas Company Limited take no responsibility for any loss or damage caused to outside parties in association with this operation, following publication of this notice.

Survey Operations Area

Public AnnouncementTO all Ships, Fishermen and Mariners

“Pipeline Route Free Span Correction and Survey for RasGas Flow Assurance Project Pipeline ”

Any further inquiries should be addressed to: Construction Manager RasGas Flow Assurance Project (Offshore), Tel. +974 5556 0951

Reuters

DAVAO, PHILIPPINES: Philippine Pres-ident-elect Rodrigo Duterte will continue his predecessor’s macroeconomic policies focusing on higher infrastructure spending and fiscal efficiency, aides said yesterday in a bid to end uncertainty around his growth agenda.

Duterte ran on a single-issue campaign focused on law and order for a presidential election on Monday, and while an official winner had not been declared, an unofficial count by an election commission-accred-ited watchdog showed he easily won.

Duterte will accelerate infrastructure spending by speeding up outgoing President Benigno Aquino’s flagship public-private partnership programme, Carlos Dominguez, former agriculture minister and a mem-ber of Duterte’s policy team, told a media briefing. Dominguez said the 71-year old crime-busting Davao city mayor would maintain a government target to raise infra-structure spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product from 3 percent in 2014.

Under Aquino, average annual eco-nomic growth has topped 6 percent, but critics say the improvement has not trans-lated into jobs or better livelihoods for millions of poor.

Duterte’s spokesman, Peter Lavina, said high growth would be the main priority but the new government would try to ensure the benefits trickled down to the poor.

“We want to check the bottlenecks, why it is not trickling down. We want these eco-nomic benefits to reach the poorest. That’s practically the theme of these measures,” Lavina said. Dominguez said the condi-tional cash transfer programme would be “expanded and improved”.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo said annual economic growth of 7-8 percent - which Duterte’s spokesman said would be the new president’s aim - was “doable” on the back of public spending.

Duterte plans to reform tax revenue collection and streamline bureaucratic proc-esses within main tax agencies to shore up revenues, Dominguez said.

Duterte said on Monday he would seek to ease restrictions on foreign ownership in all industries to help attract foreign investment.

“He’s retaining a lot of from the previ-ous administration so this will be great for continuity,” said Nicholas Mapa, economist

at Bank of the Philippine Islands in Manila.“If Duterte can implement where the

previous administration struggled, this will definitely instil confidence in the econ-omy,” Mapa said.

Meanwhile, the Philippines’ one-time largest Muslim rebel group has congratu-lated Rodrigo Duterte as he is set to become the country’s first president from southern Mindanao island.

“On behalf of the Moro Islamic Liber-ation Front (MILF) and the Bangsamoro people, it is with great pleasure and glad-ness on my part to extend our heartfelt congratulations to you on your historic victory,” MILF chair Al Haj Murad Ebra-him said in a letter.

The Philippine Inquirer newspaper reported yesterday that Murad expressed confidence that the outspoken mayor of Davao City — a major bustling city in the south — would pursue the peace efforts between the government and the MILF.

AFP

MANILA: Philippine communist rebel leader Jose Maria Sison has expressed hopes of ending nearly three decades in exile under the new pres-idency of Rodrigo Duterte, a potentially explosive homecoming opposed by senior military figures.

Sison, 77, fled to Europe soon after peace talks failed in 1987 and has stayed abroad since, while one of Asia’s longest-running insurgencies continued to claim thousands of lives.

“I will return to the Philippines if Duterte fulfils his promise to visit me,” the Netherlands-based Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder said in comments posted on his Face-book page. “The prospects (for peace talks) seem to be bright at the moment.”

Sison, a political science professor, established the party in December 1968 and it launched a guerrilla campaign three months later.

The rebellion has left at least 30,000 peo-ple dead, by official account.

The New People’s Army is believed to have fewer than 4,000 soldiers, down from a peak of 26,000 in the 1980s, according to the military, however it retains support among the deeply poor in the rural Philippines.

Incumbent President Benigno Aquino shelved peace talks in 2013, accusing the rebels of insin-cerity in efforts to achieve a political settlement.

The talks got bogged down after the commu-nists demanded the release of all of their jailed comrades, which the Aquino government rejected.

Duterte, who was Sison’s student at a Manila university in the 1960s, is the longtime mayor of the southern city of Davao. Some of the com-munists strongholds today are near Davao, and Duterte has maintained relations with them.

Last week, local television station ABS-CBN released footage of Duterte chatting with Sison via Skype on his laptop. “I’m a socialist,” said

Duterte, who won Monday’s election in a landslide. The network said the chat took place shortly

after communist rebels freed five police hos-tages last month in Davao. Duterte signalled after Monday’s vote that he was ready to release some jailed rebels and restart peace negotiations.

Sison said in the comments posted on Facebook he had congratulated Duterte via an intermediary on his win and called for the resumption of peace talks, a ceasefire, the release of political prisoners, and the “arrest and trial of Aquino”.

Sison’s comments were a transcript of an interview he gave to Dubai’s Khaleej Times newspaper.

Sison said he hoped to return home after Duterte was sworn into office on June 30, but the communist leader added the new government must first take steps to ensure his personal safety.

“I will not dive into any situation in which the Duterte government is still unsettled and there are unwieldy elements... who violently oppose my homecoming,” he added.

Senator Antonio Trillanes, a Duterte critic and former military rebel, warned last week that Duterte could face a coup if he shut down Congress.

Trillanes warned some in the military were “strongly averse” to Duterte’s long-standing ties with communists, and that the reaction “could be violent”.

Duterte may visit Sison in the Netherlands to push forward the peace process, but no sched-ule had been confirmed, his spokesman, Peter Lavina, told reporters in Davao on Thursday.

Lavina also said Duterte would consider com-munist figures for his cabinet.

“The country needs to unite. We need every-one’s help. There are plenty of talents within the nationalist and democratic movement as well as the underground CPP-NPA so we will see,” he said, referring to the political and military wings of the communist movement.

Reuters

COLOMBO: A brother of former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa was arrested yesterday by the police Financial Crimes Investigation Divi-sion over a land deal allegedly involving money laundering, his lawyer and police said.

Several members of the Rajapaksa family are facing police investigations

for alleged financial crimes. They include Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was president for a decade until January 2015, his brothers Basil and Gotabaya, his wife Shiranthi and sons Namal and Yoshitha.

Rajapaksa’s younger brother, Basil, a former economic develop-ment minister, is on bail for alleged misappropriation of state funds after serving several months in prison and the court hearing is still taking place.

Basil Rajapaksa’s lawyer, Jayantha

Weerasinghe, said his client had been arrested. “He has been arrested - they say it’s regarding some private land. It’s a totally false allegation,” Weeras-inghe said.

Weerasinghe later said his client had been produced in a court, freed on bail and told to appear in court again on July 20.

A senior police official who is involved in the case confirmed that Basil Rajapaksa had been arrested on a money-laundering charge in

connection with the purchase of some land. Neither Rajapaksa nor his family members were immediately available for comment.

Mahinda Rajapaksa lost power in January 2015 after a campaign in which he faced allegations of misus-ing public funds and nepotism during his 10-year rule. The Rajapaksas have denied wrongdoing.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, now an oppo-sition legislator, is still popular among many ethnic majority Sinhala Buddhists

who credit him with ending a 26-year-war against ethnic Tamil separatist rebels in 2009.

Rajapaksa is trying to rally the opposition against the current gov-ernment with the help of Basil.

Sri Lanka’s current president, Maithripala Sirisena, faces pressure to act on allegations of corruption dating back to the Rajapaksa era, especially from civil society organ-isations who backed his successful bid to oust Rajapaksa.

AP

DHAKA: A leader and three mem-bers of a banned radical group in Bangladesh were arrested with bomb-making materials and were planning to commit sabotage in parts of the country, security offi-cials said yesterday.

The Jumatul Mujahedeen Bang-ladesh waged a violent campaign demanding Shariah law and cre-ated a large support network before being banned in 2005.

Its members who are on bail or outside jail are now trying to regroup, said Mufti Mahmud Khan, a spokesman for the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion that made the latest arrests.

The group’s current leader, Abdul Baten, and his associate Monir Mollah were arrested at a bus station in Dhaka, Khan said, and information from them led secu-rity officials to a railway station where they arrested Golam Kibria and Mollah Roman, who were trav-elling to Dhaka from Chittagong.

“We arrested them from Kam-lapur Railway Station,” Khan said.

The battalion seized fire-bombs, explosives and other bomb-making materials the four had in their possession, but Khan did not give details on the acts of sabotage the men were sus-pected of planning.

The men were produced before journalists at a news briefing on Thursday but little other informa-tion was disclosed about them.

Anatolia

DHAKA/ANKARA: Turkey yes-terday recalled its ambassador to Bangladesh for consultations after strongly protesting the execution in the country of a top Islamist leader,

the state-run Anatolia news agency said.

Motiur Rahman Nizami, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was hanged at a Dhaka jail late Tuesday for the massacre of intellectuals during the 1971 independence war with Pakistan.

Turkey’s ambassador to Dhaka,

Devrim Ozturk, is due to arrive back in Turkey. The Turkish foreign ministry had already strongly con-demned the execution, saying it did not believe that “Nizami deserved such a punishment”.

It said that Turkey, which has abolished capital punish-ment, feared that the use of such

methods risked creating “rancour and hatred between our Bangla-deshi brothers”. Since coming to power in 2002, Turkey’s ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Devel-opment Party (AKP) has sought to boost the country’s power in the Muslim world well outside its Ottoman sphere of influence.

Duterte aims for economic continuityCommunist chief hopes to end exile under Duterte

Brother of Rajapaksa arrested over land deal

Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte speaking to supporters during a rally in Manila. The incoming administration has announced at a conference in Davao City yesterday that the first priority of the Transition Committee will be to rebuild the public’s trust in police forces.

Dhaka arrests four members of banned group

Duterte has promised that he would seek to ease restrictions on foreign ownership in all industries to help attract foreign investment.

Turkey recalls Bangladesh ambassador over execution

A view of the area where the flash flood hit the city causing traffic jams in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, yesterday. Heavy rain led to flash floods on some part of the capital as some 50 vehicles got trapped on the streets.

Flash floods hit Malaysian capital

ASIA / AFRICA06 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Anatolia

BEIJING: Beijing has insisted that relations with the United Kingdom will not be impacted by footage in which Queen Elizabeth was caught describing Chinese officials as hav-ing been “very rude” during a state visit last year.

China’s state-run Global Times reported yesterday that foreign min-istry spokesperson responded to the footage by insisting that Presi-dent Xi Jinping’s visit to the UK had marked a new phase in developing a “golden era” for bilateral relations.

“President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the UK last October was a great success, thanks to the enormous efforts made by the teams of the two sides,” Lu Kang told a press confer-ence Wednesday. “Both China and the UK agree on that.”

The comments by Queen Elizabeth were recorded by a Buck-ingham Palace camera as she was introduced Tuesday to a police com-mander responsible for organizing the state visit. “They were very rude to the ambassador,” she said, refer-ring to the UK.’s envoy. Buckingham Palace refused to comment on the monarch’s private conversations.

“However, the Chinese state visit was extremely successful and all parties worked closely to ensure it proceeded smoothly,” it insisted.

In a commentary on the incident, the Global Times criticised West-ern media as “careless gossipers”, “fierce-looking and narcissistic” and seeming to “retain the inele-gance of barbarians”. “However, we also believe that they will step forward in constant contact with the eastern civilization of five thou-sand years,” it underlined.

Communist Party expels former diplomatBEIJING: China’s top disciplinary watchdog announced yesterday that a former assistant foreign minister has been expelled from the coun-try’s Communist Party for several alleged violations of its codes of conduct. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection accused Zhang Kunsheng of having accepted money and gifts, joined private clubs and exchanged power for sex.

State news agency Xinhua cited the statement as saying that Zhang was also suspected of hav-ing accepted bribes in exchange for taking advantage of his position to seek benefits for others. Judicial authorities have undertaken the case against the former diplomat.

President Xi Jinping launched a wide-reaching crackdown on cor-ruption among officials in 2013, since when tens of thousands of suspects — including dozens of high-profile individuals at the top of the Communist Party — have been investigated.

Anatolia

KAMPALA: Yoweri Museveni was sworn in as Uganda’s president for a fifth term yesterday at a ceremony in the capital Kampala, which saw attendance of prominent African leaders, including the con-troversial Sudanese head of state.

Museven i , who grabbed power after a guerrilla war in Uganda in 1986, defended the pres-ence of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the Interna-tional Criminal Court for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Darfur.

Countries all over the world have been asked to facilitate Bashir’s arrest and extradition, but Museveni took a swipe at the International Crimi-nal Court by saying: “ICC is none of our business, we

had supported the ICC previously but they are just a bunch of useless people.”

The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International condemned Museveni for inviting Al Bashir.

Local media reports said the opposition Forum for Democratic Change leader Kizza Besigye was last evening flown to Moroto dis-trict, some 458.5km from Kampala, to thwart any possibility of him disrupt-ing the ceremony. Also, a day before the Ugandan president’s ceremony, social media was shut down in coun-try. Telecommunication companies in the country gave out messages to their customers, saying: “We have been given a directive to temporar-ily switch off social media.”

Meanwhile, Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s regional director, said in a statement: “As a signatory to the Rome Statute, Uganda has an absolute obligation to surrender

AFP

JOHANNESBURG: About 32 million people in southern Africa face hunger after a crippling drought worsened by the El Nino weather phenomenon devastated crops across the region, the UN’s food agency said yesterday.

Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozam-bique have all issued drought alerts in recent months, as thousands of cat-tle die, reservoirs are depleted and harvests fail.

South Africa describes the drought as its worst in more than 100 years, while in neighbouring Namibia Coca-Cola announced that it will stop production of all canned drinks in the country because of a water shortage.

“There are already an estimated 32 million food-insecure people in

the southern Africa region, largely as a result of drought which led to poor harvests last year,” the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said in its latest report.

“There have been a lot of disrup-tions in the season as a result of El Nino coming on the back of a poor harvest from the previous season,” WFP regional food security analyst Andrew Odero told a news confer-ence in Johannesburg.

Dam levels were also “much lower” than at the same time last year — the beginning of the dry season — and countries which depend on hydro-power could face blackouts, he said. “Zimbabwe is one the most hard hit,” said Eddie Rowe, the coun-try director for WFP.“The country is coming out of a very poor agricultural season with 40 percent of normal corn production. It’s already a frag-ile rural economy.”

Queen Elizabeth’s comment won’t impact ties: China

Anatolia

LAGOS, NIGERIA: Militants in the Niger Delta region have ordered oil firms to shut down operations and evacuate workers from the region or risk “bloody attacks” on their facilities. Mudoch Agbinibo, a spokesman for the new militant group, said in a statement Thursday afternoon: “The Niger Delta Aveng-ers is giving two weeks’ ultimatum to all oil companies in our region to shut down and evacuate their staff.

“If at the end of the ultimatum and you are still operating, we will blow up all the locations. It will be bloody. So just shut down your operations and leave,” Agbinibo added, boasting that the army lacks the capacity to curtail their activities.

The group has claimed respon-sibility for previous bombings of key oil platforms in the region in Febru-ary and earlier this month, resulting power outages across Nigeria.

32 million face hunger

in drought-hit southern

Africa: UN agency

him to the ICC. Failure to do so would be a breach of its duty and would be a cruel betrayal of the hundreds of thousands of people killed and dis-placed during the Darfur conflict.”

This is not the first time Bashir has traveled abroad and escaped jus-tice. Last year, he attended an African Union meeting in South Africa but the nation, a signatory to the Rome Statue, also refused to arrest him, sparking widespread criticism.

Apart from Bashir, South Afri-can President Jacob Zuma, African Union head and Chad President Idriss Deby and Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe also showed up at the cere-mony. Deby, who himself has been the head of his state since 1990, heaped praise on Museveni and his three-dec-ade long rule. “Africa needs Museveni because he will bring his long-term experience in power to the African Union and the continent,” he said.

Ignoring the reported detentions of opposition leaders and concerns expressed by human rights groups prior to his swearing in, Museveni in his speech said: “Uganda has been at peace for the first time in 500 years, nobody can disturb the peace of Uganda, nobody has capacity to disturb this peace however hard they may try.” He also called for peace in the region especially in countries where Uganda had deployed its forces. “We call for peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, the Central African Republic and Burundi.”

The Ugandan president also vowed to fight corruption that has been reportedly entrenched in his government, especially among civil servants. The swearing in ceremony was also marked with a 20-gun salute, traditional African dances and show of air space might by the Ugandan People’s Defence Force.

Bashir defies

arrest warrant

with Uganda trip

Reuters

KHARTOUM: Sudanese officials said President Omar Hassan Al Bashir returned yesterday from a one-day visit to Uganda made in defiance of an international war-rant for his arrest on charges of genocide.

The Hague-based Interna-tional Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Bashir in 2009 and 2010, accusing him of mas-terminding genocide and other atrocities in his campaign to crush a revolt in Sudan’s western Dar-fur region.

Uganda is a member of the ICC, which means it is required to act on the arrest warrant. The trip was Bashir’s first to Uganda since the ICC warrants were issued and follows Ugandan President Yoweri Musev-eni’s visit to Khartoum last year.

Amnesty International had called on Uganda to arrest Bashir immediately and hand him over to the ICC.

“As a signatory to the Rome Statute, Uganda has an absolute obligation to surrender him to the ICC,” said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.

“Failure to do so would be a breach of its duty and would be a cruel betrayal of the hundreds of thousands of people killed and displaced during the Dar-fur conflict.”

Sudan’s official news agency had reported that Bashir would spend two days in Uganda, where he would watch Museveni being sworn in for a fifth term.

But speaking to journalists at Khartoum airport after Bashir’s return, a senior Sudanese foreign ministry official said the visit had not been cut short.

Reuters & AFP

SURABAYA, INDONESIA: So many animals have perished at Indonesia’s biggest zoo that wildlife activists call it the “zoo of death” and are demand-ing an overhaul of its management.

Activists say many of the more than 2,200 animals at the zoo in the city of Surabaya are crowded into cages and enclosures far too small for them, and they also face a shortage of proper feed.

A critically endangered Sumat-ran elephant has become the latest animal to die in one of Indonesia’s ill-maintained zoos, an official said yesterday, sparking anger from activ-ists and politicians.

The female elephant, called Yani, died in the city of Bandung on Java

island on Wednesday after falling ill a week earlier. “They need to make an effort to ease the overpopulation of animals,” Petrus Riski of the Indonesia Wildlife Communication Forum said at the zoo as keepers carried a crate of fish into a congested pen of pelicans.

“It can be done by sending them to other conservation institutes.”

Zoo keepers attribute most of the deaths to natural causes, and said the tiger’s death was still unexplained. But activists point to a string of unusual inci-dents that undermine their confidence in the zoo, which was founded in 1916.

An 18-month African lion was found hanging dead in its cage in 2014 and a dead giraffe was found with about 18kg of plastic in its stomach - rub-bish thrown into its cage by visitors.

About 45 Komodo dragons, a large species of lizards only found in eastern

Indonesia, died in battles they fought against each other in their overcrowded cage. The zoo’s director blamed bureau-cratic hurdles hampering efforts to improve conditions. “We’ve been try-ing to resolve these issues one by one,” said director Aschta Boestani Tajudin.

“I hope in three to four months from now we can finally solve the problem.”

But critics are not convinced. They say poor staff training and outdated facilities are to blame for the zoo’s woeful record.

“They need more support and funds to really fix things,” said Tony Sumam-pau, secretary general of the Indonesian zoo and aquarium association.

Many of the country’s zoos are in poor condition and house animals in filthy, cramped enclosures. The most notorious, in the city of Surabaya, has been dubbed the “death zoo” as

hundreds of animals have perished there. Bandung zoo said the cause of Yani’s death was yet to be determined but the creature appeared lethargic before she died and pictures showed large sores on her body.

Efforts to save the elephant were hampered as the zoo had been with-out a resident veterinarian for almost a year, zoo spokesman Sudaryo admitted.

But the spokesman, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, insisted the zoo had done all it could by consult-ing an outside vet and elephant-keeper and providing medicines.

Bandung mayor Ridwan Kamil vis-ited the sick elephant before it died, as anger mounted about the case, and urged the privately-run zoo to seek out-side help. “If they don’t have the budget to manage (the zoo), they should seek support,” he said. An online petition

calling for the zoo to be cleaned up, which has gathered over 10,000 sig-natures, said animals there looked emaciated and cages were dirty and rusty. The zoo has reportedly been temporarily closed as the elephant’s death is investigated, according to local media.

Animal activist Femke den Haas, from rights group the Jakarta Animal Aid Network, criticised a lack of clear rules about how Indonesian zoos should be run with regard to such things as cage size and feed.

“Yani’s case is really just the tip of the iceberg because many animals are dying in Indonesian zoos,” she said.

The WWF estimates there are between 2,400 to 2,800 Sumatran elephants left in the wild, with poach-ing and loss of their rainforest habitat blamed for population decline.

Museveni sworn in as President for fifth term

Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Al Bashir arrives for the swearing-in ceremony of Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in Kampala, yesterday.

Critics demand improvements at Indonesia’s ‘zoo of death’

Museveni, who grabbed power after a guerrilla war in Uganda in 1986, vowed to fight corruption, especially among civil servants.

Nigerian group

threatens oil firms

with bloody attacks

Uganda’s President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni takes aoth of office at the Independance grounds in Kampala, yesterday.

Afghan civilians sleep along a road near the Torkham border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in Nangarhar province yesterday. Torkham, the main border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, was closed by Pakistani authorities on May 9.

Sleeping tight

Ali Haidar Gilani (centre), son of former Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani (left), speaks to the media outside his residence in Lahore yesterday. Ali was freed from a three-year kidnapping ordeal.

Relief after return

PAKISTAN 07FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Hard for classical dancers in Pakistan to practise art formAFP

KARACHI: With her arms stretched out and her hands elegantly curved, the young dancer stamps her feet with aplomb, defying prejudice.

Her art is reviled by many in reli-giously conservative Pakistan, where it is often linked with prostitution.

“We constantly have to explain to people that dance is an art form, it’s not just about what happens in the red light areas, not just about entertain-ing men,” says Suhaee Abro.

Graceful and poised in her richly coloured sari, she practises the odissi form of dance, in which movements of the face and hands are perfectly timed.

Dance is deeply embedded in Paki-stani culture, in marriages, folk festivals and films — the complex choreogra-phy similar to that found in Bollywood.

But it is also deeply frowned upon in the Muslim-majority country for women to be seen dancing outside of a family setting, and worse still to per-form for money.

“Unfortunately it is associated with the ‘dancing girls of Lahore’,” says Rahat Kazmi from the National Academy for Performing Arts — a ref-erence to women swaying awkwardly in the infamous district of Pakistan’s cultural capital.

Historically, classical dance in the subcontinent was the domain of courte-sans of the Mughal Empire, which ruled India for hundreds of years until the advent of British rule in the 19th century.

Like the geishas of Japan, they were

known as connoisseurs of the fine arts before their status deteriorated, espe-cially under British rule.

Today, many women use dancing as a cover to carry out their illegal trade.

It is therefore necessary “to cre-ate this bifurcation and say that no, this is art also”, according to Kazmi.

“I am a practising Muslim and a dancer, and I don’t see why this should clash. My heart does not feel anything

wrong,” says anthropologist and pro-fessional dancer Feriyal Aslam, who practices Bharatanatyam, a form from southern India. “But my mum herself feels it is wrong, she thinks ‘what will I say to God one day, that I did not tell my daughter to do the right thing’,” explains the 40-year-old, who has also written a thesis on the subject.

Dance was banned in 1981 as part of an Islamisation drive led by military

ruler Zia-ul-Haq. His directive specif-ically targeted dancers wearing ankle bells, an essential accessory of the main classical forms which the regime asso-ciated with obscenity and nudity. The directive exists to this day but its appli-cation has eased, though new threats have emerged.

“Now the bureaucratic hassle is not so strong, but the Taliban mindset had gotten into the mind of the people,”

says dancer Sheema Kirmani.Anyone in the audience “who feels

that he might get to heaven by killing you can just walk up to the stage and do so,” she says.

What’s more, dance enjoys no insti-tutional support, with dancers often forced by economy to work second jobs, and both the private and pub-lic sectors reluctant to be associated with the disreputable art.

Pakistani classical dancer Suhaee Abro during an interview at her home in Karachi. RIGHT: Pakistani classical dancer Sheema Kirmani (right) instructs students in a studio at her home in Karachi.

Reuters

ISLAMABAD/DHAKA: Pakistan and Bangladesh summoned each other’s ambassadors yesterday to register “strong protest” in connection with a row over the execution of an Islamist leader in Bangladesh this week, both sides said in statements.

The two Muslim countries used to be two halves of the same one until Bangladesh broke away in a 1971 war of independence.

Bangladesh has in the past few years been prosecuting people accused of carrying out crimes in support of Pakistani forces during the war, and has executed five of them, the most

recent one, Motiur Rehman Nizami, on Wednesday.

Pakistan said Nizami’s hanging was “unfortunate” and attempts by Bangladesh to malign Pakistan were “regrettable,” though it was not clear what Bangladeshi statement Pakistan was referring to.

Bangladesh summoned the Paki-stani ambassador in Dhaka to register its “strong protest” over statements by Pakistan.

Relations between the two coun-tries have never recovered from the 1971 war when Bangladeshi nation-alists, backed by India, broke away from what was then West Pakistan.

About three million people were killed in the war, Bangladesh says,

and thousands of women were raped.Some Bangladeshi factions includ-

ing the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party, opposed the break up and some if its members, including Nizami, have been prosecuted by a Bangladeshi war crimes tribunal set up in 2010.

“The government of Bangladesh deeply regrets that despite Bangladesh’s repeated overtures, the malicious cam-paign by Pakistan against the trials of the crimes against humanity and genocide in Bangladesh is continu-ing,” Bangladesh said in a statement.

International human rights groups say the tribunal’s procedures fall short of international standards but Bang-ladesh rejects that and the trials are supported by many Bangladeshis.

Pakistan and Bangladesh summon

envoys as tension escalates

Pakistan to get $510m of IMF loan instalmentAFP

ISLAMABAD: The International Mon-etary Fund announced yesterday that it would release to Pakistan a further instalment worth $510m of a three-year economic bailout package.

The IMF’s delegation head Har-ald Finger said in a statement that the decision was taken after a review of the country’s economic performance

and “after productive discussions” with Pakistani authorities.

Finger said in a statement that growth remains robust and is expected to reach 4.5 percent this fiscal year despite a weak cotton harvest, declin-ing exports, and a more challenging external environment.

“Real GDP growth is expected to reach 4.5 percent in FY 2015/16 and 4.7 percent in FY 2016/17, helped by lower oil prices, rising investment, including

related to the China Pakistan Eco-nomic Corridor (CPEC), improvements in energy supply, buoyant construc-tion activity, and acceleration of credit growth,” the statement said.

The IMF also voiced satisfaction with Pakistan’s progress on reforms, which were required under a $6.6-bil-lion bailout agreed in 2013.

The loan was granted on condition that Pakistan — which was suffering an energy crisis — carried out extensive

economic reforms, particularly in the energy and taxation sectors.

IMF stated that all end-March 2016 quantitative performance cri-teria, including the budget deficit target and the floor for the central bank’s net international reserves, have been met.

It said the IMF staff mission, led by Finger, met Pakistani officials in Dubai from May 2-11, 2016 to conduct discussions on the eleventh review of Pakistan’s economic programme.

Mystery shrouds video of Sharif with Army Chief

Internews

KARACHI: Leaked video footage of the prime minister’s meeting with Army Chief General Raheel Sharif at PM House on Tuesday has raised eyebrows because of its rare audio content and time of release.

News TV channels aired the foot-age in which Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in an apparent one-on-one meeting with Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif can be heard telling him that a “date has been given”.

Although the audio is not clear, one TV journalist quoted the general as saying, “You [Nawaz] have to reach there before that date”.

While such high-level meetings between the civil-military leader-ship are routinely recorded by the state TV crew on camera, the audio is always muted.

A former news in-charge at Paki-stan Television (PTV) explains how it is done: “According to standard pro-tocol, the audio should be on mute. At times it happens that a general sound is captured by the camera micro-phone. Even then, when it is being broadcast on PTV it is always muted.”

He said the footage is recorded by a PTV cameraman or the crew mem-ber assigned to cover functions at PM House, but the audio is not recorded.

The time of the video raises alarm because it was broadcast soon after “unnamed sources” told reporters in a selective leak that the army chief had conveyed a ‘pointed’ message to PM Sharif, asking him to resolve the Panama Papers issue at the earliest.

“Gen Sharif believes that the issue is causing instability and insecurity,” a source had said.

A PM Office statement swiftly denied that any message about the offshore entity scandal had been conveyed, and asked the media to “avoid speculation/flashing of news pertaining to unrelated issues and obtained through sources”. The state-ment emphasised that the meeting had discussed issues pertaining to national and internal security.

Speaking to Geo News later on Tuesday evening, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif too denied that the Panama Papers issue came up for discussion. “Was the media channel or journalist who leaked it present in the meeting?” he asked.

“It was a one-on-one meeting; who was the third person getting these details? Panama leaks is a political issue that is already dying.”

The video as well as the unofficial comments by the army chief and the premier’s meeting add weight to spec-ulation about the civil-military friction over the issue of accountability.

Pakistan to hang

five for bus attack

and murder of

rights activist

AFP

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s military chief yesterday approved the execu-tion of five “hardcore terrorists” that the army said were involved in the killing of a prominent rights activ-ist and a deadly bus attack claimed by Islamic State.

An army statement said the five were charged in a military court and admitted their guilt, though it did not specify what they were charged with.

Military chief General Raheel Sharif had confirmed the death sen-tences, it said.

The five “perpetrated” the attack on a bus in Karachi last May, in which gunmen stormed the vehi-cle and killed 45 members of the minority Ismaili community, the statement said.

The Islamic State group claimed the attack, though the military state-ment yesterday described the five as “active” members of Al Qaeda. No reason for the discrepancy was immediately given.

The five were also “involved” in the killing of rights activist Sabeen Mehmood as well as several other attacks, the statement said, with-out offering more details.

Mehmood was shot dead in the port city of Karachi in April last year minutes after hosting a seminar on abuses in restive Balo-chistan province. The killing sent shockwaves through the country’s progressives, as those who speak out against alleged abuses by the state warned they were under increas-ing threat. Months later, authorities revealed that the main suspect in the bus attack, Saad Aziz, had admitted to Mehmood’s murder also.

Aziz was among the five whose executions were confirmed yesterday.

Hungary’s Rubik’s

Cube champion

dazzles Pakistani

students

AFP

ISLAMABAD: Hunor Bozsing says he got lucky eight years ago: search-ing for an old toy in his house in Budapest, instead he stumbled across a Rubik’s Cube — a twist of fate that launched him to interna-tional fame.

Bozsing — Hungary’s three-time national Rubik’s Cube champion — was in Pakistan this week to organise the country’s first Cube competition.

Dazzling on national television, he also enthralled puzzled students in the capital Islamabad with his speedy solutions.

The 19-year-old found himself surrounded by youngsters taking selfies after a demonstration yes-terday. He was six when he saw his first Rubik’s Cube, he told AFP. At the time, he could only solve one side.

“Later, when I was 11, I was searching for an old toy in our house but luckily I could not find it and instead I found a Rubik’s Cube...I decided to solve it. I mean the whole thing.” Bozsing said he spent two months trying to crack the puzzle with the help of the Internet.

Rubik’s Cube was invented in 1976 by Hungarian sculptor and architecture professor Erno Rubik.

Time of footage arouses curiosity.

VIEWS08 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Corruption is a ubiquitous phenomenon that lends itself to several strains affecting states, institutions and the larger society. The urge to bypass legitimacy has been there for centuries and reference to corruption is found in historical texts and ancient public

administration literature. In his celebrated work on statecraft, Indian thinker Kautilya details administrative corruption and points out weaknesses in the system that may lead public officials to use government machinery for private gains. The treatise —Arthashastra —written around the third century BC delves into the reasons for graft and ways of tackling it.

The causes of corruption during historical times were largely helped by amorphous systems not given to sound professional settings. Institutions in a loose system tend to become dysfunctional soon with corruption being one of the symptoms of an inefficient administration. The checks and balances of a

democratic society were lacking in ancient times. Though society was simple, corruption is said to have haunted the common man.

Corruption in today’s globalised world is driven by several competing forces. Globalisation provides an accentuating environment for corruption across international borders. This is what the Panama Leaks showed recently. The Anti-Corruption Summit in London is being held under the shadow of the Panama Leaks that showed the high and mighty squirreling away their funds in overseas havens. David Cameron had last year promised

an anti-graft summit. The high-profile British premier got some bad press ahead of the summit when he told the Queen that some ‘fantastically corrupt’ countries were going to attend the conference. He was referring to Nigeria and Afghanistan.

Cameron’s remarks are revealing as they point to a virtually axiomatic truth. Afghanistan has been riven by insurgency for years. It is hard to enforce the rule of law in societies where lawlessness gets institutionalised because of loose structures of governance. The sense of nationalism is beaten by an overpowering propensity to be loyal to one’s clan or phratry. It is easy for undemocratic societies to fall into the corruption trap.

Nigeria is more democratic but scores low on the corruption index. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari did not seem overtly offended by the comment and admitted that his country had a corruption problem. Cameron’s comments, though not inaccurate, sounded off-the-cuff. He should have been more discreet. It is not surprising that developing and least developed countries are corrupt. The level of corruption in countries where the political system shows a degree of maturity, like Russia and its former republics, should also concern policy makers.

No watchdog

David Cameron’s remarks ahead of the Anti-Corruption Summit added context to a universal problem.

Quote of the day

I may have made mistakes but I did not commit any crime.

Dilma Rousseff Suspended Brazil President

E S TA B L I S H E D I N 1 9 9 6

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEFDR. KHALID BIN MUBARAK AL-SHAFI

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Income inequality is driven by both political and eco-nomic forces and it waxes and wanes over time. In my new

book, “Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globali-zation,” I introduce the concept of Kuznets waves to describe this rise and fall. The name comes from the famous American economist Simon Kuznets, who in the 1950s

and 1960s argued that as societies underwent the Industrial Revolu-tion they become more unequal, with labour moving from agricul-ture to industry. This is followed by a period of declining income ine-quality as highly educated labour becomes more plentiful and social transfers increase. So it seemed that the rich countries were des-tined to become more egalitarian and stay that way.

But Kuznets’ theory ran into trouble in the past three decades as inequality rose in almost all devel-oped countries, with the technology revolution playing the role of the Industrial Revolution and labour moving from well-paying man-ufacturing to less-remunerative services. Thus the broad forces pushing up US inequality remain dominant. There are five specific forces to consider:

Q The increasing share of national income that accrues to owners of capital;

Q Very high and rising con-centration of incomes from capital;

Q People holding high-paying jobs also often have high capital income;

Q The tendency of high-income individuals to marry each other; and

Q The rising political power of the rich.

The pattern of capital claiming a larger share of national income is a well-documented phenome-non in many countries, including the US In a recent paper, econo-mists Loukas Karabarbounis and Brent Neiman show that capital’s share of US net income increased from about 33 percent in 1975 to 37 percent in 2012. This is a new development because it was gen-erally assumed that capital and labour income shares are fixed over the long term. This was deemed so obvious that relatively little empirical work was dedicated to the issue. The main reason for the recent increase is that as the price of capital goods declined, compa-nies used ever-more capital -- more than enough to make up for the decline in price. A continuation of this trend seems likely, as machines keep on replacing workers and fur-ther erode labour’s income share.

If capital ownership were evenly distributed, the rising share of income from capital wouldn’t be a big concern. However, in all modern societies capital owner-ship is heavily concentrated. In principle, a “deconcentration” of

capital ownership would go a long way toward defusing the problem. But this isn’t anywhere on the hori-zon. Data from economist Edward Wolff indicate that concentration, instead, is increasing. In 2007, 38 percent of all stocks were owned by the wealthiest top 1 percent of indi-viduals; the top 10 percent owned 81 percent of all stocks; and both represented an increase from 2000.

Another impetus to rising ine-quality comes from a tendency, documented by economists Chris-toph Lakner and Tony Atkinson, for people with high income from labour to also have high income from capital. Atkinson and Lakner show that the likelihood of a person who is in the top 1 percent by labour income being in the top decile by capital income has increased from less than 50 percent in 1980 to 63 percent in 2010.

The reason for this is that peo-ple with very high earnings save a sizeable portion of their income, which then generates investment income. It’s also easy to see how this kind of inequality can become entrenched, with parents investing in their children’s education, ena-bling them to get highly paid jobs while also inheriting large amounts of capital. People with high incomes both from labour and capital enjoy greater stability and less risk. At the same time, because of their edu-cational attainment, they benefit from the perception of merit, which makes such inequality politically

more difficult to tackle.The next factor is the tendency

of the highly skilled and educated, and thus generally rich individu-als, to marry people with similar characteristics. In the 1960s, when relatively few women worked, it was common for well-off men to marry women who didn’t work outside the home and wouldn’t con-tribute a monetary income. This tended to diminish inequality. But as economists Jeremy Greenwood, Nezih Guner, Georgi Kocharkov and Cezar Santos document, during the past quarter-century Ameri-cans increasingly marry people like themselves. A welcome change in social norms that has seen the soar-ing labour participation of women and encouraged marriages based on similarities of interests and back-grounds has paradoxically led to an increase in income inequality. This trend may well persist, as the gap in both educational achievement and labor-force participation between men and women disappears.

Finally, we come to the fifth element that makes the reversal of inequality particularly difficult: the growing importance of money in politics. People who make major contributions to political campaigns are, by definition, rich. They also receive a return on these political investments in the form of influ-ence and favourable policies. To believe otherwise isn’t simply being naïve; it goes against the key prin-ciples of economics and common sense. The rich didn’t get that way by throwing money around with-out expecting a return on it.

As documented by political sci-entists Larry Bartels and Martin Gilens, US senators and repre-sentatives are much more likely to address the concerns of their rich constituents than poor constitu-ents. Gilens, for example, showed that policies favoured by the rich have a much greater probability of being acted upon and adopted than policies about which the poor and the middle class care.

These five developments, which all aggravate US inequality, make it hard to see where the offsetting forces would come from. The eco-nomic logic of the rising share of income going to capital is reinforced by the way that high incomes from capital and labour are distributed, by social norms and finally by eco-nomic policies. It is this unusual confluence of factors that seems likely to keep inequality high for the foreseeable future.

Five powerful forces are driving income inequality

By Branko Milanovic

Bloomberg

FROM LEFT: European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Parliament President Martin Schulz pose during the opening of the Europa Experience exhibition in the European House in Berlin, yesterday.

As societies underwent the Industrial Revolution they become more unequal, with labour moving from agriculture to industry. This is followed by a period of declining income inequality as highly educated labour becomes more plentiful and social transfers increase. So it seemed that the rich countries were destined to become more egalitarian and stay that way.

The economic logic of the rising share of income going to capital is reinforced by the way that high incomes from capital and labour are distributed, by social norms and finally by economic policies. It is this unusual confluence of factors that seems likely to keep inequality high for the foreseeable future.

By Jim Gomez and Teresa

Cerojano

AP

Rodrigo Duterte, the bombastic mayor of a major southern city, was heralded Tuesday as pres-

ident-elect of the Philippines after an incendiary campaign that projected him alternatively as an emancipator and a looming dictator.

“Our people have spoken and their verdict is accepted and respected,” out-going President Benigno Aquino III’s spokesman, Sonny Coloma, said in a statement. “The path of good gov-ernance ... is already established as all presidential candidates spoke out against corruption.”

Former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, who was running second behind Duterte in the unofficial vote count fol-lowing Monday’s election, conceded defeat. “Digong, I wish you success,” Roxas said at a news conference, using Duterte’s nickname. “Your victory is the victory of our people and our country.”

Duterte’s harshest critic also con-ceded that the mayor, known for his off-color sexual remarks and pledges to kill criminal suspects, had emerged the unquestioned winner.

“I will not be the party pooper at this time of a festive mood,” Sen. Anto-nio Trillanes IV, who has filed a plunder complaint against Duterte, told The Associated Press. “I will step back, listen to his policy pronouncements. This time we don’t expect a stand-up comedy act but a president who will address the nation.”

Duterte, 71, has not spoken pub-licly since casting his vote Monday, and

remained at his home in Davao, on the southern main island of Mindanao.

Results from a semi-official count gave Duterte an unassailable lead, thrusting him into national politics for the first time after 22 years as mayor of Davao and a government prosecutor before that. In those two jobs, Duterte gained recognition by going after criminals, although he was accused of carrying out hundreds of extrajudicial killings.

That earned him the nickname

“Duterte Harry,” a reference to the Clint Eastwood movie character with lit-tle regard for rules. He has also been compared to Donald Trump, the US Republican presumptive presidential nominee, for his propensity for inflam-mable statements.

In the election for vice president, who is separately elected in the Philip-pines, the son of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was trailing by a narrow mar-gin behind Rep. Leni Robredo, who is backed by Aquino.

During the three-month campaign, Duterte made audacious promises to eradicate crime and corruption within six months. His explosive outbursts and curses against the inequality and social ills that bedevil the Filipino everyman resonated among different class levels of the people that his big political rivals clearly underestimated until he began to take a strong lead in opinion polls in the final weeks of the campaign.

He captured domestic and interna-tional attention with speeches peppered

with obscene jokes about sex and rape and anecdotes about his Viagra-fueled sexual escapades, and with undiplo-matic remarks about Australia, the United States and China, all key play-ers in the country’s politics.

US officials parried questions Tues-day about whether they had concerns about Duterte’s record.

“Washington respects the choice of the Philippines’ people. We will gladly work with the leader they’ve selected,” State Department spokeswoman Eliz-abeth Trudeau told reporters.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the US looked forward to “strengthening and deepening” ties with the Philippines, which he hailed as a “vibrant democracy” that helps the US on maritime security. He com-mended the Philippines on its smooth election.

Duterte has not articulated an over-all foreign policy, but has described himself as a socialist wary of the US-Philippine security alliance. He has worried members of the armed forces by saying that communist rebels could play a role in his government.

When the Australian and Ameri-can ambassadors criticized a joke he made about wanting to be the first to have raped an Australian mission-ary who was gang-raped and killed by inmates in a 1989 jail riot, he told them to shut up.

He said he would talk with China about territorial disputes in the South China Sea but if nothing happened, he would sail to an artificial island newly created by China and plant the Philippine flag there. China, he said, could shoot him and turn him into a national hero.

He has also threatened to form

one-man rule if legislators in Con-gress oppose him.

But his campaign manager, Peter Lavina, told The Associated Press that the brash image, the obscene jokes and the outlandish promises were a strat-egy to attract voters.

“That’s part of the game. You know in Philippine elections you have to act like a comic, you have to find ways for you be in the head-lines,” Lavina said.

Duterte displayed his softer side early Wednesday when he visited his parents’ tomb in a Davao cemetery to pay homage to them. He stood in front of the tomb with his right hand on it and wept.

“Help me Mom,” he said in the local Bisaya dialect as he sobbed quietly. “I’m just a nobody.”

President Aquino went public against Duterte late in the campaign, saying the mayor may endanger the country’s hard-fought democracy and squander economic gains of the last six years, when the Philippine econ-omy grew at an average of 6.2 percent, one of the best rates in Asia.

Aquino, whose parents were democracy champions who helped topple the senior Marcos, also cam-paigned against Marcos Jr., who has never clearly apologized for economic plunder and widespread human rights abuses under his father. Filipinos have been hypersensitive to potential threats to democracy since they ousted the elder Marcos.

On Monday, Duterte was asked to comment on his image as an advocate of mass-murder of crime suspects. He replied without elaborating, “I’m sure that there will be a resurrection one of these days.”

OPINION 09 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Global challenges await WHO’s new leaderBy Joshua Busby, Karen Grépin &

Jeremy Youde

The Washington Post

Two years ago, the Ebola virus buf-feted West Africa and alarmed the world. A belated international mobilisation coupled with heroic

local action averted a wider global cri-sis - but not before 28,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died. Sur-vivors continue to live with the long-term health consequences.

As detailed here at the Monkey Cage, the World Health Organisation came under fire for how it handled the Ebola crisis. The repercussions of the slow response to the virus continue to haunt the organisation as it attempts to tackle the Zika virus and other global-health emergencies.

Although the WHO jumped in compar-atively faster to declare the Zika outbreak a public-health emergency of international concern, structural and financial prob-lems continue to hamper its operations.

The big WHO turning point next yearWe recently edited a Global Health

Governance special issue on the Ebola crisis - and believe 2017 will be pivotal for the WHO and global-health govern-ance. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan will complete her term, and the World Health Assembly will vote on her succes-sor in May 2017.

What’s different about this election is increased transparency. Candidates will participate in a public process to share their visions of the WHO and to answer questions from member states. The elec-tion process will now allow for the active involvement of member states in decid-ing who is best suited to lead the WHO.

Why is this election important?

The WHO’s influence has been declin-ing for some time. New actors and sources of finance such as the Gates Foundation have created a more diffuse global-health landscape. Spending on global health increased dramatically since 2000, but much of the funds were channelled through new entities such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria - not the WHO.

The organisational and leadership shortcomings of the Ebola response fur-ther diminished the WHO’s reputation. A number of our special-issue contrib-utors - including Charles Clift, Sophie Harman, Andrew Price-Smith and Tim-othy Mackey - argue that the post-Ebola reforms largely failed to address seri-ous WHO structural defects, namely its weak finances and insufficient atten-tion to strengthening of health systems.

What about WHO funding?WHO relies overwhelmingly on volun-

tary contributions from countries, often for specific projects and priorities that leave core WHO functions such as surveillance

under-resourced. Donors have been unwilling to raise the level of assessed dues and invest in the organisation. More-over, the WHO’s control over its various regional offices remains a problem. The organisation’s ability to support health-systems strengthening, the centrepiece of efforts to head off future health cri-ses in various countries, remains woeful.

These are not new problems. But the WHO is the primary point organisation on global-health issues and needs to lead targeted responses to health emergencies as well as coordinate preparedness plans.

What do we know about the candi-dates for the WHO director-general?

The nomination process to elect the next WHO leader opened on April 22 -- candidates must be nominated by one or more countries. This time, there may be strong pressure to select someone from Africa or Latin America, as all the WHO director-generals since 1973 have come from either Asia or Europe.

Some of the names discussed so far include Michel Sidibé, the executive

director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV and AIDS; and Awa Coll Seck, former Senegalese minister of health and exec-utive director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership. Others with both expertise and credibility include Agnes Binagwaho, Rwanda’s minister of health; and Graça Machel, chair of the Partnership for Mater-nal, Newborn and Child Health, and a past chair of the GAVI Alliance Board. Tederos Adhanom Ghebreyesus, foreign minister of Ethiopia and a former health minister - who has chaired both the Global Fund and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership - is a candidate. Phillipe Douste-Blazy the current head of Unitaid and is a former French minister of foreign affairs and of health, has also been nominated and reportedly has the support of the French government. Sania Nishtar, Pakistan’s former minister of health, is also inter-ested in the post.

The WHO executive board will inter-view a short list of the top-five candidates in early 2017 and present the top-three candidates for a vote by secret ballot at the May 2017 World Health Assembly

It’s no easy role to fill - the WHO director-general will need to regain the confidence of the organisation’s stake-holders, particularly its donors. She or he has to boost funding for core functions that only a global organisation really can perform, such as coordination of disease surveillance and early-warning efforts. Moreover, the next director-general will have to mobilise more resources for health-systems strengthening for countries that lack capacity, lest we see a repeat of the Ebola and similar crises.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, a doctor and public health specialist who served as director-general from 1998 to 2003, may be the model for the next WHO leader. Under her watch, the WHO moved for-ward on an ambitious treaty on tobacco control and supported price reductions for AIDS drugs. If experience is any guide, reforming and rebuilding the WHO will require a leader who knows global pub-lic health issues -- but also is politically savvy enough to restore the world’s trust and confidence in an organisation that safeguards the health of millions.

World Health Organisation came under fire for how it handled the Ebola crisis. The repercussions of the slow response to the virus continue to haunt the organisation as it attempts to tackle the Zika virus and other global health emergencies.

People pass by a banner that is part of Sierra Leone’s anti-Ebola campaign in Freetown.

Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte talks to the media before casting his vote.

New Philippine leader Duterte seen as emancipator

All thoughts and views expressed in these columns are those of the writers, not of the newspaper.All correspondence regarding Views and Opinion pages should be mailed to the Editor-in-Chief.

A labourer works on a salt pan on a hot summer afternoon in Mumbai yesterday.

Worth his salt

A man pulls the front body of a mini-truck on a camel cart in Ahmedabad, yesterday.

Camel wagon

INDIA10 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

IANS

KOCHI: The Kerala government will now take legal steps against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for comparing the state with Somalia, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said on yesterday.

Addressing a press conference, Chandy said he had hoped that Modi would withdraw his remark that came in for widespread criticism in the state.

The comparison, he said, “has affected Kerala and the people of our state in a big way. “Since his state-ment came at an election rally, we are looking at the legal aspects on how we can approach the Election Com-mission”, the Congress leader said.

Chandy said the latest Human Development Index ranked Kerala

as the number one state in the coun-try while Modi’s home state Gujarat was at the 11th place.

“He is the prime minister of the country. He is not just a BJP leader to demean our state. He perhaps for-got that Kerala is a part of India. It has really hurt Kerala and Keralites.”

Modi said on Sunday that the child death ratio among tribals in Kerala was scarier than even Somalia.

He also cited media reports to say that tribal children in Peravoor were seen foraging for food in a garbage dump — to make his case that the state had not been properly governed.

Ever since Modi made the remark, the social media has been flooded by the “PoMoneModi” hashtag which takes its origin from a hugely popular film dialogue of superstar Mohanlal. Loosely translated, it means: “Get lost.”

Former chief minister AK Antony also asked Modi to apologise for the remarks.

“Somalia is known as a land of pirates and Modi just can’t go without apologising,” he said. CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechuri, who is camping in the state, accused Modi of defaming Kerala and its people.

The BJP, which has never won an assembly or Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, has been making a valiant attempt to defend Modi.

Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers H N Ananth Kumar told reporters here that Modi won’t react to controversies.

“Chandy is trying to use this to deviate from issues. The sentence that should be used is ‘PoMoneChandy’,” said Kumar.

After 24 years, no

adjournments in

Lok Sabha due to

interruptions

IANS

NEW DELHI: The 16th Lok Sab-ha’s eighth session that ended on Wednesday created history of sorts as business in the lower house was carried out without any adjourn-ment due to interruptions.

Such smooth functioning of the Lok Sabha proceedings was earlier witnessed in the recent past in 1990 and 1992 only, a senior Lok Sabha official said yesterday.

“This is the making of history,” he said. During the eighth session, that began on April 25, the Lok Sabha clocked 120 percent work during its 13 sittings spread over 92 hours and 21 minutes.

The official recalled that in 1992, during the third session of the 10th Lok Sabha, when Shivraj Patil was the speaker, the lower house had 49 sittings during which too there was no adjournment due to inter-ruptions. In 1990 too, during the second session of the 9th Lok Sabha, a similar feat was achieved when Rabi Ray was the speaker.

In her valedictory address at the session’s conclusion, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan said she was happy the lower house of par-liament was not adjourned even once during the eighth session due to interruptions.

Mahajan complimented the members and thanked them for their cooperation in the transac-tion of the Lok Sabha business.

“I am happy to inform you that in the recent past, this is the first ses-sion in which the house was not been adjourned even for a single minute due to interruptions. I thank the entire house for the cooperation extended to the chair,” the speaker said.

IANS

NEW DELHI: The Central govern-ment yesterday told the Supreme Court that Punjab and Haryana must decide the dispute over SYL and water shar-ing between themselves, as the court reserved its order on the presiden-tial reference seeking its opinion on the validity of Punjab Termination of Agreement Act, 2004.

A constitution bench of Justice Anil R Dave, Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose, Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel and Justice Amitava Roy reserved the order as the Central govern-ment told the bench that it was a matter

between the states and they have resolve it mutually and it has nothing to say.

“We feel that two states must decide the issue themselves,” Solici-tor General Ranjit Kumar told the court.

Referring to September 20, 2004 top court order on the presidential reference, he said that there was no change in the stand from the one taken by the then Congress-led UPA gov-ernment in 2004.

However, he objected to Punjab trying to put the blame for the mess at the doorsteps of the central gov-ernment. He said that on one hand Punjab was defending its 2004 law - terminating all water sharing agree-ments with the neighbouring Haryana, Rajasthan, and Delhi, and the other

hand, seeking setting up of a fresh tri-bunal to decide on the extent of water it had to share with these states.

“You (Punjab) are terminating (the agreements), then you don’t give water and then you are also talking about setting up of a fresh tribunal to go into the entire issue of water shar-ing... You are talking both ways,” said Ranjit Kumar.

Appearing for Punjab, whom he claimed has been deprived and denied its legitimate share of water, counsel Rupinder Singh Suri took the court through various reports of commis-sion and other authorities to say that at every stage, Punjab was given 5 million acre feet (MAF) water but in actuality it got much less.

Crusader against

freebies to file

petition against

election officials

IANS

CHENNAI: Crusader against freebies offered by political parties, S Sub-ramaniam Balaji, said yesterday he will file a contempt petition against the three Election Commissioners and Chief Electoral Officer in Tamil Nadu for contempt of Supreme Court.

“I have lodged complaints against the freebies announced by political parties like the AIADMK, DMK and PMK with the Election Commission. Till now I have not received any reply,” Balaji told.

“On May 11, I had sent a contempt notice to Chief Election Commis-sioner Nasim Zaidi and Election Commissioners AK Joti and Om Pra-kash Rawat besides Rajesh Lakhoni, Tamil Nadu’s Chief Electoral Officer, holding them personally responsi-ble to uphold the rule of law as laid down by the apex court,” Balaji said.

Balaji had filed a case against DMK’s 2006 election promise of free colour television and also against the AIADMK’s 2011 election promise of free mixer-grinder, laptop, fan, cattle and more.The case was finally decided by the Supreme Court in 2013 after it told the Election Commission to frame a guideline on election man-ifestoes after consulting recognised political parties and make it a part of the model code of conduct.

“Although, the law is obvious that the promises in election mani-festo cannot be construed as ‘corrupt practice’ under Section 123 of RP Act, the reality cannot be ruled out that distribution of freebies of any kind, undoubtedly, influences all people. It shakes root of free and fair elections to a large degree,” Balaji quoted the apex court decision as saying in his contempt notice.

“The Election Commission has failed to exercise its authority in respect of AIADMK which issued its manifesto announcing freebies like cell phones for all ration card holders and 50 percent funding of scooter purchases by women and others after model code of conduct came into vogue,” Balaji said.

IANS

NEW DELHI: As the stage is set for reconstituted Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to take up the con-troversial AgustaWestland chopper deal, the BJP has replaced its sen-ior members like S S Ahluwalia and Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ mem-bers on the key parliamentary panel with vocal critics of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

Congress will be in minority in the 22-member panel (15 from Lok Sabha, 7 from Rajya Sabha) whose composition is decided by respective strength of the parties in both houses of parliament. It has only four mem-bers including chairman K.V. Thomas while BJP will have nine members.

NDA constituents Akali Dal and Shiv Sena have one member while

lone Nagaland MP Neiphiu Rio, whose Nagaland Peoples Front is also part of NDA, is a member too. A nominated member from the Anglo-Indian com-munity has also been included in the committee for 2016-17.

There are two members from Tri-namool Congress, and one each from the Biju Janata Dal, Samajwadi Party and AIADMK.

Besides Thomas, Lok Sabha MP from Kerala’s Kochi, other Congress members are Shantaram Naik, Satya-vrat Chaturvedi and Bhubaneshwar Kalita - all from the Rajya Sabha.

In the reconstituted PAC, which took over with effect from May 1, 2016, the BJP has has replaced Ahl-uwalia, the MP from Darjeeling, and Pokhriyal, the MP from Hardwar and a former Uttarkhand chief minister, ostensibly for political considerations as elections are due in the hill state in early 2017.

IANS

VARANASI: Calling for a Sangh-mukt-Bharat, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar (pictured) yesterday advised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) not to preach nationalism and said his Janata Dal-United (JD-U) will expand in Uttar Pradesh.

In his first visit to Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar launched a bitter attack on both the BJP and the RSS.

“Today the BJP is talking about nationalism whereas the veterans of the BJP and the RSS played no role in the independence movement,” Nitish Kumar told a public rally at Pindra area here.

“When Bapu (Mahatma Gandhi) was fighting against the British, when freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad gave their lives for the country, they (BJP and RSS) were not there.

“But today they are preaching nationalism,” he said. He quickly added: “We don’t need national-ism lessons from them.”

Of the RSS, he said: “They pretend to be nationalist but the fact is that tricolor is not their flag. Their real flag is bhagwa (saffron).”

The chief minister alleged that the Modi government had failed on every front.

“They promised to bring back black money in 100 days. Have they delivered?

Instead, “they delivered Love Jehad and Ghar Wapsi and, during the Bihar elections, they raised the issue of beef”, he said.

Nitish Kumar pointed out that Modi had in his 2014 Lok Sabha elec-tion speeches promised to give Rs 15 lakh of black money his government would bring home from abroad to every Indian. Now he was mum on the issue.

“They speak in two tongues. Before elections, they speak one language

and after election something else.”Saying he wanted a Sangh-

m u k t - B h a r a t (RSS-free-country) and sharab-mukt-samaj (liquor-free-society), Nitish Kumar said that if the BJP can be defeated in Bihar, it can be defeated in other states too.

He urged people in states going to the polls to choose “wisely”, rejecting those whose

election promises remained unfulfilled even two years after Modi took office.

Nitish Kumar said the JD-U was “now planning to spread in UP in a big way”. Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, will see assembly polls early next year.

Claiming that the liquor ban was a success in Bihar, he dared Modi to ban liquor in BJP-ruled states too.

“Modi comes from Gandhiji’s state. Why doesn’t he go for liquor prohibi-tion? Why don’t they (BJP) ban liquor in all-BJP ruled states?”

IANS

HYDERABAD: There is more bad news for Telangana, which is reeling under severe drought, with ground-water levels plummeting further.

With deficit rainfall for two consecutive years, the average groundwater level fell by 2.89 metres bgl (below ground level) in April 2016 when compared to April 2015.

The state groundwater depart-ment yesterday released the report for the last month, which indicates that water level fell alarmingly in some parts of the state.

In a state facing water scarcity due to second successive drought, reeling under heat wave conditions and sharp fall in levels in major reservoirs, the decline in groundwater table is fur-ther adding to people’s woes.

The average groundwater level for the state in April 2016 was 15.66

metres whereas it was 12.77 metre during the same period in the previ-ous year. The net fall of 2.89 metres has been attributed to deficit rain-fall of 24 percent in 2014-15 and 25 percent during 2015-16.

According to the report, the fall ranging from 1.23 metres to 5.99 metres was observed in all 10 dis-tricts in the state. The highest fall in average water levels was observed in Nizamabad district and the shallow-est fall in Khammam district.

The maximum recharge of groundwater takes place during mon-soon but for two years the state did not get sufficient rains.

The analysis indicates deep water levels of more than 20 metres in 137 mandals, between 15 to 20 metres in 69 mandals and between 10 to 15 metres in 98 mandals.

The report said there is an urgent need to take appropriate measures to improve the groundwater condi-tions in stressed areas.

Chandy warns of legal steps against Modi Kerala Chief Minister said: “Modi is the prime minister of the country, he is not just a BJP leader to demean our state. He perhaps forgot that Kerala is a part of India. It has really hurt Kerala and Keralites.” Punjab & Haryana must solve

their water dispute: Centre

Groundwater level drops further in Telangana

BJP drops Ahluwalia from panel on chopper deal

Nitish pitches for ‘Sangh-mukt-Bharat’

Members of El Salvador brotherhood take part at the traditional Rocio Pilgrimage in Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain, yesterday. The annual pilgrimage to El Rocio in Huelva, southern Spain, is one of the most important traditions in the region, attracting millions from across Andalucia and the entire country.

Rocio pilgrimage

EUROPE / UK 11FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

AFP

PARIS: France’s embattled Socialist government faced a no-confidence vote yesterday after bypassing parlia-ment to force through a labour reform bill that once again drew thousands onto the streets in protest.

Unions and student groups marched in Paris and other cities including Mar-seille, Nantes and Toulouse, as they have done regularly since the government

proposed the reform two months ago.Violence broke out at one protest

in the capital when masked youths clashed with demonstrators and jour-nalists. Riot police had left the scene shortly beforehand. The CGT union said 50,000 people demonstrated in Paris.

The government says the reform is aimed at loosening up France’s noto-riously rigid job market.

But protesting students who believe it is weighed in favour of businesses unfurled a banner reading “Medef (the employers’ federation) commands, the government obeys, the youth resist”.

The government’s decision to force through the adoption of the reform has been widely seen as an admis-sion of failure as the deeply unpopular President Francois Hollande grapples with a decision over whether to seek re-election.

The move also laid bare a gaping rift in the Socialist Party as rebel MPs had threatened to doom the legisla-tion in parliament.

On the right, meanwhile, the reform is seen as too timid—mocked as “a shadow of its former self”—after waves of angry street protests forced the government to make a number of concessions.

Opponents need 288 votes to bring

down the government, which is consid-ered highly unlikely because Socialist rebels and Green lawmakers have said they will refuse to back the opposi-tion motion. The rebel Socialist MPs failed by just two votes to bring their own vote of no confidence, but their efforts drew a stern warning from the parliamentary relations minister, Jean-Marie Le Guen, who said Thursday that they had “gone too far”.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls was defiant, saying Wednesday the reform must go ahead “because the country must move forward and because sal-ary negotiations and workers’ rights must progress.”

The government argues that the reform will give companies more flex-ibility to fight endemic unemployment.

Joblessness, which stands at 10 per-cent overall and at nearly 25 percent for young people, has plagued Hol-lande’s four years in power.

The right, which has a minority in the National Assembly, or lower house, says Hollande has led France into an “impasse”. Paradoxically, the motion will receive support from the far-left Front de Gauche party, which said Thursday its goal was not to bring down the government but to torpedo the reform. “The only tool we have left,

the only leverage, is the no-confidence vote,” said the party’s parliamentary group leader Andre Chassaigne.

The standoff over labour reform is just a latest headache for Hollande since he was forced to abandon his attempts at changing the constitution

in the wake of the November 13 ter-ror attacks on Paris.

In a sign of the government’s nerv-ousness on the labour reform issue, it has made a significant U-turn on one of the most controversial meas-ures. Companies that want to lay off

staff will not be able to point solely to losses in France to justify such a move.

Unions fear that companies with profitable international operations will “cook the books” to make it look as if their French units are making a loss, in order to trim their work forces.

AFP

LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron hailed progress on pursuing corrupt individuals at an international summit yesterday, but rejected accusa-tions he had failed to deliver transparency on Britain’s overseas tax havens.

More than 40 countries signed a declaration to “pursue and punish” those who perpetrate or facilitate corruption, and individual nations agreed a range of initiatives to open up anonymous company ownership and recover stolen assets.

“Today we have seen the world unite against a shared enemy. Countries have gone further than ever before in condemning corruption and pledging to drive it out,” Cameron said.

The meeting, which included lead-ers of Nigeria, Afghanistan, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as well as US Secretary of State John Kerry, was held amid outrage over the revelations in the Panama Papers.

The leak of 11.5 million documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed how global elites use anonymous companies, often incor-porated in offshore hubs, to move their money around without being detected.

Cameron announced that Nigeria, France, the Netherlands, Afghani-stan and Kenya would, like Britain, be creating public registers of who

ultimately owns shell companies.France goes the farthest, includ-

ing trusts as well as companies.Six other countries—Australia,

Georgia, Indonesia, Ireland, New Zealand and Norway — pledged to work towards a register. Campaigners hailed the move as significant progress, but expressed disappointment that it was not extended to Britain’s over-seas territories.

A short walk away from the sum-mit, activists set up a “tropical tax haven” in London’s Trafalgar Square, complete with sand, palm trees and

financiers in suits and bowler hats reclining in deck chairs. Inside, Mo Ibrahim, the Sudan-born telecoms tycoon whose eponymous founda-tion pushes for better governance in Africa, had described such companies as “getaway vehicles for corruption”.

“Legitimate business has no need for anonymous companies. Please ban them,” he urged Cameron.

In his closing remarks, the prime minister defended British financial hubs such Cayman Islands, Jersey and Isle of Man, saying they had made “exemplary” progress on transparency.

Britain calls for more

‘distinctive’ BBC in

governance overhaul

Reuters

LONDON: The BBC will face exter-nal regulation for the first time in its 94-year history, the govern-ment said yesterday, subjecting it to tighter scrutiny but stopping short of the heavy-handed intervention that some stars and programme-makers had feared.

In a once-in-a-decade review of a treasured national institution, the government said the BBC must become more distinctive and avoid apeing its commercial radio and TV rivals. “We will place a require-ment to provide distinctive content and service at the heart of the BBC’s overall core mission of informing, educating and entertaining,” Cul-ture Secretary John Whittingdale told parliament.

Known affectionately as “Auntie”, the BBC reaches an estimated 97 percent of Britons every week and is admired around the world, espe-cially for its news and drama. But critics say it is bloated, inefficient and wasteful of public money.

Rivals say its guaranteed income of £3.7bn ($5.35bn), derived from an annual licence fee of £145.50 imposed on all TV-watching homes, distorts competition and gives it an unfair degree of dominance. The reforms will replace the govern-ing body, the BBC Trust, with a new board of up to 14 people, to which the government will name six mem-bers but the BBC will be allowed to appoint the majority.

External regulation will be handed to Ofcom, the communi-cations watchdog which oversees commercial broadcasters, and it will assess the BBC’s impact on the market with “proportionate pow-ers to sanction”.

The BBC Trust has been severely criticised in the last few years. A report this year said the broadcaster was guilty of serious failings over the late Jimmy Savile, a former radio and TV star who was revealed after his death in 2011 to have been a pro-lific sex offender. Before the review, newspaper reports had suggested Whittingdale would tell the BBC to stop broadcasting some of its most popular shows that go head-to-head with commercial rivals at peak times, like the pre-Christmas favourite “Strictly Come Dancing”.

At the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards on Sunday, stars such as Oscar-win-ning actor Mark Rylance launched a passionate defence of the corpo-ration, warning the government not to threaten its future.

Whittingdale made light of such fears. “All the concerns ... were based on ill-founded, hysterical specula-tion by left-wing luvvies and others,” he said, using a mildly mocking Brit-ish term for actors. “In actual fact what the government propose has been widely welcomed by, amongst others, the BBC.”

AFP

ROME: Italy has begun the grisly task of raising a corpse-packed trawler from the seabed near Libya, a year after up to 800 migrants perished in the Mediterranean’s deadliest disas-ter since World War II.

Two bodies were recovered in the early stages of the delicate and com-plex operation being carried out by diving and marine company Impresub and heavy lifting specialists Fagioli under the supervision of the Italian coastguard. Despite the costs and difficulties involved, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi vowed last year to salvage the wreck and give the vic-tims decent burials as a symbol of respect for all the migrants who have died trying to reach Europe’s shores.

Around 9,000 people are known to have lost their lives in the Mediterra-nean since the current migrant crisis erupted in mid-2013. Aid agencies say it is likely many more disappeared without trace after being abandoned on the high seas by traffickers.

The two companies are using a specially designed device with hydraulic arms and underwater cam-eras to lift the wreck from its resting place, around 1,245 feet down.

The perilously overcrowded migrant boat sank on the night of April 18-19 last year after running into a Portuguese freighter which had raced to its rescue, the colli-sion sending panicked passengers

stampeding to one side, causing the vessel to keel over.

Only 28 people survived. Accord-ing to survivors, there had been up to 800 people packed onto the boat.

“The recovery consists in clasping the wreck with the robotic device... and bringing it to the surface with-out damaging it, if possible,” engineer Egidio Ibba, Impresub’s director of operations, said in a video released by the navy. All apertures on the boat have been sealed off to ensure none of the bodies within are lost as the vessel is lifted, and the navy said bits of the trawler had been removed to ensure a smooth lift to the surface.

The Ievoli Ivory offshore tug ship, kitted out with the vast yellow hydrau-lic arms, has a crew of 20 as well as 35 technicians on board.

The sunken trawler will be lifted onto a barge which will begin the long, slow haul to the port of Augusta in Sicily, where forensic scientists from across Italy are on hand to begin iden-tifying the bodies packed inside. “Even before it is taken ashore, accessible parts of the wreck will be examined to recover any bodies in reach,” Ibba said.

The wreck will then be placed in a refrigerated tent some 30 metres long, 20 metres wide and 10 metres high, so that work can begin on extracting the bodies. Once empty, the boat will be immediately destroyed.

Fifty bodies were recovered the day of tragedy, while another 171 have since been brought up from around the wreck.

Reuters

BERLIN: Ukraine and Russia agreed to create demilitarised zones and implement other security measures in separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine, but they remained at odds over how to move towards local elections.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters after talks in Berlin with the foreign min-isters of Russia, Ukraine and France that it would be “a big step forward” if the measures were actually imple-mented and helped strengthen a fragile ceasefire.

Other steps agreed during the three-hour meeting included greater information-sharing and a halt to mil-itary exercises along the dividing line between the separatist territories and Ukraine proper that has led to vio-lence in the past, he said.

The parties also agreed to new measures aimed at resolving conflicts more quickly which would be moni-tored by the Organisation for Security

and Cooperation in Europe, he said.Steinmeier said the ministers had

failed to reach agreement on a proc-ess for holding local elections, but said Russia and Ukraine had for the first time at least presented some con-crete plans on the issue which would be worked on.

“The greatest danger is that the conflict will escalate again,” Stein-meier said. I assume the parties to the conflict want to see progress in the discussions. Only this can pre-vent a flare-up of hostilities.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said Kiev continued to insist on the right of Ukrainian refugees to vote and run for office in the separatist areas as well as on the need to ensure full and universal access for all media.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated accusations that Kiev was dragging its feet in fulfilling its obli-gations under Minsk peace agreement.

Kiev accuses Moscow of support-ing the separatists with weapons and fighters in order to destabilise Ukraine and its Western-leaning government, a charge the Kremlin denies.

French govt faces trust vote over labour reform billUnions and student groups marched in Paris and other cities including Marseille, Nantes and Toulouse, as they have done regularly since the government proposed the reform two months ago.

Protesters clash with anti-riot police during a demonstration against the French government’s labour law reform bill in Paris, yesterday.

Ukraine and Russia agree

on some security measures

Italy raises migrant boat’s

cargo of death from sea

UK hails progress; defends tax havens at corruption summit

British Prime Minister David Cameron joined by Sarah Chayes, a senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Programme, (left) US Secretary of State John Kerry, (second from left) and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, (right), as he opens the international anti-corruption summit yesterday.

A peacock walks across the lawn at the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California. It was a treat for the people who visited the place.

In full bloom

AMERICAS12 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

The Senate deliberated for 20 hours before voting 55-22 early yesterday to put Rousseff on trial.

Reuters

BRASILIA: Suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff vowed yesterday she would fight to prove her innocence after the Senate voted to put her on trial for breaking budget laws, a historic decision fueled by deep reces-sion and a sprawling corruption scandal.

Rousseff, a leftist in office since 2011, was replaced by her vice president, centrist Michel Temer, who took over as interim president for the duration of a Senate trial that could take up to six months.

Speaking shortly before she left Brasil-ia’s Planalto presidential palace, Rousseff told supporters she was notified of her sus-pension yesterday morning. She reiterated what she has maintained since impeachment proceedings were launched against her last

December by the lower house of Congress.“I may have made mistakes but I did not

commit any crime,” Rousseff said in an angry address, calling the impeachment “fraudu-lent” and “a coup.” Rousseff, 68, was flanked by dozens of ministers who were leaving with her administration. Even as many of them wept, Rousseff remained stolid.

“I never imagined that it would be neces-sary to fight once again against a coup in this country,” Rousseff said, in a reference to her youth fighting Brazil’s military dictatorship.

Shortly afterward, she addressed hun-dreds of supporters outside, many of them dressed in the red of her Workers Party, and already shouting “Temer out!”

“This is a tragic hour for our country,” Rousseff said, calling her suspension an effort by conservatives to roll back the social and economic gains made by the Workers Party during its 13 years in power. The party rose from Brazil’s labour movement and helped pull millions of people out of poverty before run-ning into recession and scandal with many of its leaders tainted by corruption investigations.

The Senate deliberated for 20 hours before voting 55-22 early yesterday to put Rousseff on trial over charges that she disguised the size of the budget deficit to make the economy look healthier in the runup to her 2014 re-election.

Rousseff, an economist and who became Brazil’s first woman president, has denied any wrongdoing and has called the charges

Obama sets state

dinner table for

five at unusual

Nordic summit

Reuters

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama is set to toast the five lead-ers of Nordic nations at a lavish state dinner at the White House on Friday, an unusual summit aimed in part at sending a message to a nation not on the guest list: Russia.

Obama will laud the human-itarian and environmental accomplishments of Sweden, Den-mark, Finland, Norway and Iceland, but also wants to talk about how to deal with their increasingly aggres-sive neighbour Russia ahead of a Nato summit in July.

“We share the concern of countries in the region, particu-larly those who have a border with Russia, about the increasing pres-ence of Russian military assets in the area,” said Charles Kupchan, Obama’s senior director for Euro-pean affairs.

“We will be discussing ways to enhance the security of the region, writ large, and also what we can do through dialogue and diplomacy to urge Russia to be more transpar-ent and to be more restrained and careful in its military exercises,” Kupchan told reporters.

Obama last met Nordic leaders in Stockholm in 2013 on his way to a G20 summit in St Petersburg after canceling a planned bilateral meet-ing with Russian President Vladimir Putin because of tensions over Syria and surveillance issues.

Since then, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region, prompt-ing Nordic nations to step up their military cooperation and the United States to boost military spending to help Nato do more to try to deter Russia.

During a recent visit to Europe, Obama sought to reassure allies about the US commitment to the continent, but pushed nations to increase their defence spending and stay united amid the strain of dealing with an influx of migrants.

Reuters

CALGARY/LAC LA BICHE, ALBERTA: Workers for one of the largest oil sands companies affected by a wildfire in northern Canada will begin return-ing to the shuttered facilities, a union official said, the latest indication the key petroleum production area was slowly coming back online.

Meanwhile, the premier of the province of Alberta and the head of the Canadian Red Cross announced that residents of Fort McMurray, the oil-boom town that was evacuated last week because of the fire, would

be offered direct financial aid.In Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin

Trudeau established an ad hoc cabi-net committee to coordinate federal relief efforts. Trudeau will tour the fire zone today.

Ken Smith, president of Unifor Local 707, the union that represents 3,400 Suncor Energy Inc workers, said the company would start to fly employ-ees back to its oil sands base plant.

“It will take a few days to get the plant up and in condition to start han-dling feed,” Smith said.

Facilities north of Fort McMurray that had been shuttered largely because of heavy smoke rather than fire were likely to come back on line first, in a

matter of days in many cases.Roughly 1 million barrels per day

(bpd) of output were shut down dur-ing the fire, about half of the oil sands’ usual daily production.

Late Wednesday, Enbridge Inc said it had restarted its 550,000 bpd Line 18 pipeline, which carries crude from the company’s Cheecham termi-nal 380 kilometers (236 miles) south to the regional crude trading hub of Edmonton.

Enbridge also said crews were on site at its facilities in the Fort McMur-ray region and confirmed its terminals were not damaged by the wildfire.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc was the first company to resume operations in the

area, restarting its Albian Sands mines at a reduced rate. The facility can pro-duce up to 255,000 bpd.

Syncrude, controlled by Suncor, restarted power generation at its oil sands mine in Aurora, north of the city as it began planning to resume oper-ations. The site has a total capacity of around 315,000 bpd.

Dozens of repair trucks and other vehicles headed for the oil fields on Wednesday, driving north along the main highway into the area, a Reuters eyewitness said. Some were towing heavy equipment.

Still, some projects to the south and east of Fort McMurray remained unreachable as the fire threat persisted.

Minnesota men

worked hard to

help ISIS:

Prosecutors

Reuters

MINNEAPOLIS: Three Somali-American men accused of trying to assist Islamic State put a lot of effort and planning into their attempts to travel overseas to fight with the militant group in Syria, and they also talked openly of killing peo-ple, prosecutors said.

Minnesota residents Mohamed Farah, Abdirahman Daud and Guled Omar are charged with conspiring to provide material support to Islamic State (IS) and commit murder out-side the United States, according to a brief filed by prosecutors.

The men are part of a group of 10 people that faced similar federal charges. Six have already pleaded guilty to providing material support to IS, and another is believed to be in Syria, said Ben Petok, a spokes-man for the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota.

Assistant US Attorney Andrew Winter told the jury in US District Court in Minneapolis that the three defendants worked “tirelessly” to travel to Syria to join Islamic State.

Winter showed slides and read quotes by the three defendants from conversations tape recorded by the government, in which the men dis-cuss their criminal plans.

Winter quoted Omar discuss-ing how he would help Islamic State return to the United States: “They’ll do crazy damage. I swear to God, we have a big opportunity.”

Winter also quoted Omar talking about killing the “kuffar,” an Arabic term for disbeliever. Defence attor-neys were scheduled to make their opening statements later.

Reuters

WASHINGTON: A senior US Repub-lican filed legislation seeking to rein in the White House’s National Secu-rity Council, saying it has grown too large and seeks to play too big a role in foreign policy.

Representative Mac Thornberry said his measure would increase over-sight of the NSC, capping it at 400 people or allowing it to be larger but subjecting the National Secu-rity adviser to confirmation by the Senate.

Thornberry estimated the NSC currently has 400 staff.

“All of President (Barack) Obama’s former Defence Secretaries have com-plained about micromanagement by the NSC,” Thornberry, chairman of

the powerful House of Represent-atives Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. “I have personally heard from troops on the frontlines who have received intimidating calls from junior White House staffers.

“Now we hear reports of NSC staffers running misinformation cam-paigns targeted at Congress and the press,” Thornberry said. He was refer-ring to a recent New York Times profile in which a deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, discussed ways the administration had communi-cated about last year’s Iran nuclear deal to the Washington press corps.

Administration officials have dis-missed proposals like Thornberry’s as political ploys.

Ned Price, a spokesman for the NSC, commented that the White House has already taken steps to trim staff and streamline procedures.

Reuters

WASHINGTON: Presumptive Repub-lican US presidential nominee Donald Trump sat down with House of Repre-sentatives Speaker Paul Ryan yesterday in an unusual and highly anticipated meeting aimed at healing fissures in the party caused by the billionaire businessman’s insurgent candidacy.

The two met for about an hour at the headquarters of Republican National Committee near the US Capitol building. Afterward, Reince Priebus, the chair-man of RNC and a Ryan friend, wrote on Twitter that the meeting was “great” and “a positive step toward party unity.”

Trump and Ryan then attended a wider meeting with other Republi-can leaders. Ryan is the nation’s top

elected Republican and is seen as a leader of the party establishment that has resisted Trump’s candidacy.

Outside the RNC headquarters, a knot of protesters took advantage of the heavy media presence to denounce Trump with signs that said “the GOP, Party of Trump.” “RIP GOP,” they shouted, referring to the Republican moniker Grand Old Party.

Party leaders are normally eager to rally around a presidential nominee in order to unite forces for the general election battle. But Ryan has withheld his endorsement of Trump out of con-cern over his incendiary tone and policy ideas that run counter to deeply held Republican doctrine.

Trump’s campaign has suggested Ryan’s support is not essential, point-ing to the more than 10 million votes Trump has received as the prospective

Republican nominee during the party nominating process.

Still, a Ryan endorsement would help Trump and the party move past an increasingly awkward phase dur-ing which Republican office-holders and congressional candidates alike have publicly struggled with the deci-sion on whether to get behind Trump.

Full support of leading party fig-ures such as Ryan would also assist Trump in building campaign infra-structure and fundraising operation he may need to compete against the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the November 8 election.

The Hill newspaper yesterday obtained a memo from Trump cam-paign that advocated benefits of a unified party, arguing it would put Republicans in better position to defeat Democrats “at every level” in the election.

For his part, Ryan must weigh the damage endorsing Trump might do to his standing as his party’s leading light on conservative policy, an image he has carefully cultivated for years. Ryan, too, may harbor hopes of run-ning for president in 2020.

Trump last week became the pre-sumptive nominee after his remaining rivals, US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich, dropped out.

Ryan was the running mate with 2012 Republican presidential nomi-nee, Mitt Romney, a harsh Trump critic.

The meeting was not expected to lead to an immediate endorsement by Ryan, who opposes Trump’s propos-als to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States, deport 11 million illegal immigrants and impose protectionist trade policies.

Brazil Senate vote suspends Rousseff

politically motivated.Despite her vows to fight, she is

unlikely to be acquitted in her trial.The size of vote to try her

showed the opposition already has support it needs to reach two-thirds majority required to convict Rous-seff and remove her from office.

“It is a bitter though necessary medicine,” opposition Senator Jose Serra, named yesterday as the new foreign minister under Temer, said during the marathon Senate debate. “Having the Rous-seff government continue would be a bigger tragedy.”

Temer aides said the incom-ing government would announce a series of austerity measures to help reduce massive budget deficit. An immediate effort would seek to reform costly pension system, possibly setting a minimum age for retirement, said one advisor.

Oilfield workers gearing up for return after wildfire

Republicans want to slash

Obama’s security council

Trump and Ryan meet in bid to heal fractured Republican Party

Protesters gather outside RNC headquarters where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump met House Speaker Paul Ryan, in Washington, DC, yesterday.

Members of Brazil’s Senate react after a vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff in Brasilia, Brazil, yesterday.

Protesters gather at the Argentine Congress, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They urged the oppposition legislators to declare a ‘social emergency’ in response to the mass layoffs and austerity policies adopted by Argentinian President Maurcio Macri.

Anti-Macri protest

AMERICAS 13FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Reuters

DEVESELU, ROMANIA: The United States switched on an $800m missile shield in Romania yesterday that it sees as vital to defend itself and Europe from so-called rogue states but the Krem-lin says is aimed at blunting its own nuclear arsenal.

To the music of military bands at the remote Deveselu air base, senior US and Nato officials declared oper-ational the ballistic missile defence site, which is capable of shooting down rockets from countries such as Iran

that Washington says could one day reach major European cities.

“As long as Iran continues to develop and deploy ballistic missiles, the United States will work with its allies to defend Nato,” said US Deputy Defence Secre-tary Robert Work, standing in front of the shield’s massive grey concrete hous-ing that was adorned with a US flag.

Despite Washington’s plans to continue to develop capabilities of its system, Work said the shield would not be used against any future Rus-sian missile threat.

Before the ceremony, Frank Rose, deputy US assistant secretary of state for arms control, warned that Iran’s bal-listic missiles can hit parts of Europe, including Romania.

When complete, the defensive umbrella will stretch from Greenland to the Azores. Today, the US will break ground on a final site in Poland due to be ready by 2018, completing the defence line first proposed almost a decade ago. The full shield also includes ships and radars across Europe. It will be handed over to Nato in July, with command and control run from a US air base in Germany.

Russia is incensed at such of show of force by its Cold War rival in for-merly communist-ruled eastern Europe.

Moscow says the US-led alliance is trying to encircle it close to the stra-tegically important Black Sea, home to a Russian naval fleet and where Nato is also considering increasing patrols.

“It is part of the military and polit-ical containment of Russia,” Andrey Kelin, a senior Russian Foreign Min-istry official, said yesterday.

“These decisions by Nato can only exacerbate an already difficult situa-tion,” he added, saying the move would hinder efforts to repair ties between Russia and the alliance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office said Moscow also doubted Nato’s stated aim of protecting the alliance against Iranian rockets following nuclear deal with Tehran and world powers last year that Russia helped to negotiate.

“The situation with Iran has changed dramatically,” Putin’s spokes-man Dmitry Peskov said.

The readying of the shield also comes as Nato prepares a new deter-rent in Poland and the Baltics, following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. In response, Russia is reinforcing its western and southern flanks with three new divisions.

Poland is concerned Russia may retaliate further by announcing deploy-ment of nuclear weapons to its enclave

AFP

WASHINGTON: The White House is considering lifting a decades-old arms embargo against Vietnam in time for President Barack Obama’s visit to the country this month.

As both countries warily eye Chi-na’s military build-up in the disputed South China Sea, officials said Obama is weighing an end to the Cold War-era ban on lethal weapons exports.

Obama begins his first visit to Viet-nam on May 21, some 41 years after the North Vietnamese army and its Viet Cong allies marched into Saigon, humiliating the world’s preeminent superpower.

Now the former foes—who fought a murderous 19-year war are putting ideology aside and gradually building

deeper trade, military and political ties.Washington and Hanoi have

been pushed together by Vietnam’s increasingly vibrant 80-million-peo-ple-strong economy, Obama’s “pivot to Asia” and a mutual desire to limit China’s regional clout.

Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has taken a more assertive stance on territorial claims in the South China Sea—deploying materiel to the dis-puted Spratly Islands. Recent military reforms announced by Xi dramatically increased navy spending.

With that, some inside the Obama administration argue that the time has come for the US to help bolster Vietnam with the sale of advanced military equipment. “It is a relatively easy argument for those who favour lifting the ban,” said Christian Lewis of the Eurasia Group, a consultancy.

“The benefits of deepening strate-gic ties to Vietnam and simultaneously containing China exceed the perceived downside of supplying Vietnam mil-itary hardware,” he added.

If the ban is lifted, most observers expect sales to start small—in part to assuage concerns about human rights, and in part not to spook China too much. Recent preparatory visits by US-based arms contractors to Vietnam focused on the sale of less controver-sial maritime surveillance and patrol hardware.

But in the medium term, the embargo would open the way for sales across the board.

“This is going to be a long term thing, but it has strategic importance because of the psychological shift,” said Richard Fontaine, president of the Centre for a New American Security.

Nine die in

Venezuela

crime crackdown

CARACAS: Nine people were killed during a crackdown by Venezue-lan security forces on crime around the capital of the crisis-hit coun-try, the military said.

With tensions high, authorities said they deployed 3,000 troops and police in and around Caracas to go after criminal gangs.

“We have a toll of nine people killed. They died when they con-fronted” security forces, said Sergio Rivero, a general in the National Guard military police, presenting a report on television.

He said those killed were mem-bers of criminal gangs. Authorities seized rifles and grenades during the raids.

Rivero added that officers arrested 15 other suspects wanted by the courts for homicide, drug trafficking and robbery.

AP

CHARLESTON: A federal appeals court rejected a bid yesterday by former Massey Energy CEO Don Blanken-ship to remain free while the court considers an appeal of his convic-tion related to the deadliest US mine explosion in four decades.

A three-judge panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals announced the ruling the same day Blankenship was scheduled to report to start serv-ing his one-year sentence.

Blankenship’s attorneys filed an emergency motion with the appeals court, noting he’s was scheduled to head to an unspecified California prison.

A federal Bureau of Prisons web-site indicated Blankenship was not

yet in the agency’s custody. Prosecu-tors declined comment. An attorney for Blankenship did not immediately comment on the ruling.

Blankenship was sentenced on April 6 to a year in prison and ordered to pay a $250,000 fine for conspir-ing to willfully violate mine safety standards at West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch coal mine, which exploded in 2010, killing 29 men.

The thought of Blankenship head-ing to prison was little satisfaction to Tommy Davis, who lost three fam-ily members in the 2010 tragedy and worked at the mine that day himself.

“It is what it is,” Davis said. “It really don’t mean a whole lot to me, because he didn’t get what he needed. He wouldn’t even have went to prison if he’d done what he needed to do as a CEO. I would still be fishing with

my son and my brother and hanging out with my nephew and still worked with 29 good men.”

But Gary Quarles, whose son Gary Wayne died at Upper Big Branch, felt differently. “I think it’s finally time he went to jail,” Quarles said. “I’m very happy about it.”

The appeals court previously set a May 31 deadline for initial briefs on Blankenship’s conviction appeal.

Federal prosecutors in Charles-ton had said allowing the 66-year-old Blankenship to continue his $1m bail would be contrary to federal law, which allows appeals to delay jail sentences only in “exceptional circumstances.”

“None of defendant’s contentions raise a substantial question likely to result in reversal,” Assistant US Attor-ney Steve Ruby wrote in an April 25 court filing.

Reuters

CHICAGO: A man who killed three people, including a sheriff’s deputy, in a dispute was executed by lethal injec-tion in Missouri on Wednesday night.

Earl Forrest, 66, was pronounced dead at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri Department of Corrections spokesman Mike O’Connell said.

Forrest killed an acquaintance, Harriet Smith, and a visitor at her house,

Michael Wells, in a dispute over meth-amphetamine, on December 9, 2002. He shot both of them in the face, within a range of a few inches, according to court records..

Forrest and his girlfriend then fled Smith’s house in the southern Missouri town of Salem, taking with them a lock-box containing an estimated $25,000 of methamphetamine. Later, he got into a shootout with law enforcement and shot and killed sheriff’s deputy Sha-ron Joann Barnes.

“Missouri’s law enforcement

officers put their lives on the line every day,” state Attorney General Chris Koster said in a statement. “They need to know that we will fight just as hard for justice for them and their families.”

The US Supreme court denied his application for a stay of execution, the only appeal that was pending in the courts. Earlier, Missouri’s Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, rejected his peti-tion to have his sentence commuted to life in prison.

During Forrest’s trial, the defence

said he had problems with alcohol and methamphetamine and that long-term substance abuse had impaired his judgment. The jury unanimously recommended a death sentence for each conviction because of aggravat-ing factors, including that part of his motivation was to obtain drugs and that he killed an on-duty officer.

Missouri has executed 86 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, making it one of the most pro-lific among the 31 states that use capital punishment.

Moscow says the US-led alliance is trying to encircle it close to the strategically important Black Sea, home to a Russian naval fleet.

US activates Romanian missile defence site

of Kaliningrad, located between Poland and Lithuania. Russia has stationed anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles there, able to cover huge areas and complicate Nato’s ability to move around.

The Kremlin says the shield’s aim is to neutralise Moscow’s nuclear arsenal

long enough for the United States to strike Russia in the event of war. Wash-ington and Natodeny that.

“Missile defence ... does not under-mine or weaken Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent,” NatoSecretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.

However, Douglas Lute, the United States’ envoy to Nato, said Nato would press with its biggest modernisation since the Cold War. “We are deploy-ing at sea, on the ground and in the air across the eastern flanks of the alliance ... to deter any aggressor,” Lute said.

White House likely to lift embargo on Vietnam arms

Missouri executes man who killed three people

Court rejects coal company ex-CEO’s plea to remain free

(FROM LEFT left) Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos and US Deputy Secretary of Defence Robert Work take part in the official inauguration ceremony of missile shield at Deveselu air base, Romania, yesterday.

AP

NEW YORK: A once-powerful New York politician convicted of using his position as Senate majority leader to pressure companies to provide hun-dreds of thousands of dollars for his son was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison, the latest in a spate of cor-ruption cases that have roiled Albany.

The sentence for Dean Skelos was significantly lower than prose-cutors had asked for, and the judge noted that the dollar value in the case “pales in comparison” to that of New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Sil-ver, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison in his bribery case this month.

But, US District Judge Kimba Wood told Skelos: “The effect of your crime has much in common with him.” She calculated the total amount loss of his crime at $680,120, and she fined

him $500,000. Skelos’ son, Adam, was due to be sentenced later. Both were convicted last year of extor-tion, fraud and bribery.

The dynamics of their father-son relationship took center stage at the sentencing hearing.

Wood interrupted attorney G Robert Gage as he spoke on behalf of the Long Island Republican to ask why the father did not reach out to his many friends to help find his son a job rather than use his position to extort companies.

“I wish I could answer that ques-tion,” Gage said. “I certainly wish it had not happened.”

Dean Skelos, 68, told the judge that the convictions had destroyed his reputation and asked for leniency for his son.

“It is heartbreaking to stand before you,” he told the judge. “Somewhere along the way my judgment became clouded.”

Former Republican senate leader Dean Skelos comes out of a court after being sentenced, in New York, yesterday.

Ex-NY senate leader gets

5-year jail for corruption

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Contestants compete in the high-heels and suits run, a yearly event in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, yesterday. The run is a charity race with men wearing suits and women wearing heels at least 9cm high.

Who’s the suit-able winner?

Minimum: 31o C Maximum: 46o C

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Very hot during the day with slight dust to

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MOST READ

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TWEET OF THE DAY

18,000 militiamen fight for Syria’s Assad

Nissan in talks to buy stake in scandal-hit Mitsubishi Motors

Weekly round-up of upcoming events and things to do in Qatar

1

2

3

FAJR

SHOROOK

ZUHR

ASR

MAGHRIB

ISHA

03.26 am04.55 am

11.30 am02.57 pm

06.12 pm07.42 pm

PRAYER TIMINGS

London woman fired for not wearing high heelsThe Washington Post

LONDON: When Nicola Thorp showed up at PwC, a finance com-pany in London, late last year, she was wearing flats - what she thought were smart, sensible shoes for her first day on the job as a receptionist.

But the 27-year-old temp worker was told by PwC that she would have to put on something a little taller. Spe-cifically, footwear with 2- to 4-inch heels.

Thorp refused, countering she’d have to spend the day on her feet. “I said ‘I just won’t be able to do that in heels’,” Thorp told BBC Radio London in an interview Wednesday. “I said ‘if you can give me a reason as to why wearing flats would impair me to do my job today, then fair enough’, but they couldn’t.” When she pointed out that men wouldn’t be expected to do the same work in heels, she says her new colleagues laughed at her and dismissed her from work without pay.

Portico, the outsourcing com-pany that had hired Thorp for the

PwC job, argued she had agreed to a dress code. It later told the BBC that, “with immediate effect all our female colleagues can wear plain flat shoes.” PwC said that such heels were not a part of its rules, the BBC also reported Wednesday.

Thorp has recently seized the opportunity to petition the United Kingdom government to outlaw mandatory high heels. “Current for-mal work dress codes are out-dated and sexist,” writes Thorp in her peti-tion to the parliament. As of yesterday morning, the petition was about

700 signatures shy of the 100,000 required for the UK parliament to consider the topic for debate.

Research into the health impacts of high heels also suggest that man-datory, all-day stilettos might be a bad idea.

Studies indicate that, over time, high heels restrict muscle function and reduce blood flow through the lower limbs; the shoes can increase the bone-on-bone forces in the knees; and a literature review traced the effects of pump shoes all the way up the spine.

Female directors considered risky: Jodie FosterAFP

CANNES, FRANCE: Jodie Foster, who presented her first main-stream film as a director in Cannes yesterday, said many studio bosses still dismissed female filmmakers as “too great a risk to take”.

The two-time Oscar-winning actress, who began her career at the age of three and is one of a handful of females in Hollywood to carve out a successful directing career, highlighted the challenges women face.

Foster noted “drastic changes” on film sets from her years as a child actor, when the only women on set were the make-up artists and the person playing her mother.

But “the one arena where it hasn’t really changed at all is directing for mainstream studio movies,” she observed.

Foster, 53, said the turbulent economy and changing technol-ogies had left studio bosses more risk-averse than ever.

“I think studio executives are scared, period, (and) for some reason women are lumped into that category of ‘too great a risk to take’.”

However Foster, who won Oscars for her roles in “Silence of the Lambs” and “The Accused”, admits that having grown up in the industry, it was easier for her to become part of the boy’s club.

But even as she encouraged other women to take a seat in the director’s chair, the star of her first big-budget genre movie “Money Monster”, Julia Roberts, admitted she was not cut out for it.

“I consider it hugely compli-mentary that people ask me if I

want to be a director. But I do not,” Roberts told reporters.

“Because I know my intellectual limitations and I know the limitations of my patience and I can’t have more than four people in an hour ask me a question that needs an answer,” said the married mother of three, draw-ing a laugh.

Roberts, 48, said taking the helm of a film was “something like playing the cello or painting that I envy and hope in another lifetime I might be drawn to”. “But I think in this life I just want to admire it from a small distance and be glad when my capabilities come into the orbit of a director that I just live to serve

and impress,” she said with a smile for Foster. In the United States, only nine percent of directors are women, according to a 2016 study from the University of San Diego.

Another study released this month by the European Women’s Audiovisual Network found that only one film in five in Europe was made

by a female director.Foster has directed several mov-

ies, as well as episodes of television series “Orange is the New Black” and “House of Cards”. She said she did not think there was “some big plot” by men trying to put women down in the film business, but it was more about being stuck in traditional models.

Angry Birds maker

Rovio bets nest

egg on 3D movie

Reuters

HELSINKI: Finnish smartphone games maker Rovio Entertainment Ltd is hoping to revive the cool of its widely-known but ageing Angry Birds franchise with an animated 3D Hollywood film financed out of its own pocket.

The original Angry Birds, launched in 2009, remains the top paid mobile app of all time. But its creator’s fortunes have dwin-dled after it failed to create new hit games; last year Rovio cut a third of its staff, hived off non-core busi-nesses and booked a nearly $15m annual loss.

Now the company is pinning its hopes on “The Angry Birds Movie”, which premiered this week in France and French-speaking Belgium.

“The whole (movie) project will have a positive impact on all of our business operations,” Rovio CEO Kati Levoranta told Reuters, adding that the company was expecting to return to profits this year. Rovio bankrolled the $73m feature film itself.

“It’s a question of risk and reward, but it’s also about crea-tive control,” Mikael Hed, executive producer and chairman of wholly owned subsidiary Rovio Anima-tion co, told Reuters. “The one who pays the bill gets to decide what’s in the movie.” The movie expands on the origin story of what made the birds so angry—that the birds’ eggs had been stolen. The char-acters may have a fresh look, but for its legions of fans, it has plenty of references to the original game where players use a slingshot to fire angry bird bombs.

Criticism hijacks

in-flight lecture by

Japan beauties

AFP

TOKYO: A Japanese travel agency has cancelled a service offering in-flight lectures from “beautiful” female university students after a barrage of online criticism accus-ing the firm of sexism.

The travel firm dropped the in-flight package Wednesday, its intended launch day, with a mes-sage saying sorry after its website was overrun with a deluge of com-plaints from angry netizens.

“The company offers a sin-cere apology that the campaign caused unpleasant feelings to many people,” said a statement titled “Apology” on its website.

Japan is no stranger to allega-tions of sexism in the workplace.

Efforts to boost female workforce participation have floundered.

TV personality Elena Lenina poses on the red carpet as she arrives for the screening of the film “Money Monster” out of competition during the 69th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, yesterday. RIGHT: French director Claude Lelouch and partner Valerie Perrin pose on the red carpet.

INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY

Russian group “Sta-nitsa” performs at Katara Esplanade.

Ford defends CEO against shareholder gripes on stock price

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Brexit slowdown could lead to

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GCC Ministers discuss issues of common concerns

The Peninsula

DOHA: Minister of Economy and Commerce, H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani participated in the 53rd meeting of the GCC Commercial Cooperation Committee held in Riyadh yesterday. GCC Ministers of Commerce met under the chairmanship of Saudi

Minister of Trade and Investment Dr Majid bin Abdullah Al Qasabi, the cur-rent Chairman of the GCC Commercial Cooperation Committee.

According to statement issued yesterday by the Ministry of Econ-omy of Qatar, the Ministers discussed several issues of common concerns and recommendations and issues presented by the undersecretaries of the ministers. The Ministers discussed joint law for unified competition law and unified draft law for counterfeit products.

They discussed allowing private companies, individuals businesses and service providers to open branches in the member countries. They also discussed document pre-pared by GCC Secretary General regarding preparing list of business-men and investors who have not been successful in their projects and set-ting up of website for registration of

trademark at GCC level.GCC Secretary General Dr Abdul

Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani also attended the meeting.

Dr Majid bin Abdullah Al Qas-abi, in his speech, said the meeting is materialising a practical reality in the GCC march which is focusing on economic integration with its driv-ing force is the pooling of the public and private sectors in GCC states. He added that all evidences confirm the availability of good opportunities for the region’s states to lay down the practical foundations to expand the scope of the inter-trade exchanges and joint investments.

In his speech Dr Al Zayani under-lined the prominent and influential role of the GCC private sector. He said GCC private sector’s initiatives and pioneering contributions have played a vital role in the sustainable development.

Minister participated in the 53rd meeting of the GCC Commercial Cooperation Committee in Riyadh.

Minister of Economy and Commerce H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani attending the meeting of the GCC Commercial Cooperation Committee in Riyadh yesterday.

Al Sada heads Qatar team to

GCC Industrial Cooperation

Committee Meeting

The Peninsula

DOHA: The 42nd meeting of the GCC Industrial Cooperation Commit-tee kicked off in Riyadh yesterday. Qatar’s delegation was led by Min-ister of Energy and Industry H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada (pic-tured). The GCC industry ministers along with a delegation of the GCC General Secretariat took part in the meeting.

The meeting discussed a number of topics of interest to the industrial sector in the GCC countries, and on the agenda mainly Controls for the Exemption of Industry Inputs in the GCC member states, the deci-sion of the Committee on Financial and Economic Cooperation on the recommendation of the Industrial Cooperation Committee to amend the fees on imports of rebar.

The meeting also discussed a draft document on the Development

Strategy industrial of non-oil exports of the GCC countries and approv-ing the final version of a draft law Standard Industrial organisation of the GCC member states and its regulations.

Reuters

YOKOHAMA: Nissan Motor Co has agreed to buy a 34 percent stake in Mitsubishi Motors Corp, taking de facto control with a $2.2bn bet that bails out its smaller, scandal-hit rival.

The deal is a lifeline for Mitsubi-shi Motors, which is mired in its third scandal in two decades and has had $3bn wiped off its market value after confessing to manipulating fuel econ-omy data. But it should also be a boost for Nissan. Japan’s second-largest car maker has struggled to make inroads into Southeast Asia, in countries like Thailand and the Philippines, where Mitsubishi’s models are popular.

Mitsubishi and Nissan already cooperate on development and manufacturing with a partner-ship dating back to 2011, but that deal does not currently involve any cross-shareholding.

Under the deal, Mitsubishi Motors will issue new shares to Nissan at a 5.3 percent discount to Wednesday’s close, raising 237.4bn yen ($2.18bn).

That will hand Nissan just over a third of the group — enough to wield control, under Japanese shareholding

rules. Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said the two would now share and jointly develop technology, and could realise “billions” in synergies by coordinating purchasing, plant uti-lisation and cooperating in growth markets.

“We are determined to preserve and nurture the Mitsubishi Motors brand. We will help this company address the challenges it faces, par-ticularly in restoring consumer trust in its fuel economy performance,” Ghosn said, addressing a joint press

conference in Yokohama. Nissan will be able to nominate

a third of Mitsubishi Motors’ board, which Ghosn said he believed would be led by a Nissan executive 1 prompt-ing industry analysts and bankers to forecast a significant reshuffle at the top. Mitsubishi Motors admitted last month it overstated the fuel economy of at least four of its models — mini cars sold in Japan, including two sold under Nissan’s badge.

That has badly hit the group, bruising a brand already losing mar-ket share and dragging its shares down over 40 percent as investors fretted over potential compensation costs. Ghosn said he had been “reas-sured” by Mitsubishi Motors’ Chief Executive Osamu Masuko over the size and scope of the fuel economy troubles, which Masuko said had accelerated discussions.

Mitsubishi Motors shares were untraded before closing up 16 per-cent at the daily limit. Nissan shares closed down 1.4 percent. Ghosn said improving performance in kei cars, a Japanese category of small cars, was one key reason for the deal. Indeed, Nissan will gain a leg up in Japan’s small car market, where it is dwarfed by Suzuki and Toyota’s Daihatsu.

Nissan buying $2.2bn stake in scandal-hit Mitsubishi

US unemployment benefit claims hit 14-month highReuters

WASHINGTON: The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose last week to a more than one-year high, but economists blamed striking telecommunica-tions workers for the surge and said the data did not signal a deterioration in the overall labour market.

Another report showed import prices increased in April for a sec-ond straight month, suggesting the

disinflationary impulse from a strong dollar and lower oil prices, which has helped to hold inflation well below the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent tar-get, was fading.

Initial claims for state unemploy-ment benefits increased 20,000 to a seasonally adjusted 294,000 for the week ended May 7, the highest level since late February 2015, the Labor Department said. It was the third consecutive week of increases in first-time applications for jobless benefits.

“We have to look past the noise in the latest jobless claims number

because it was likely influenced by the Verizon strike. The broader underlying trend in claims remains very constructive,” said Jacob Oubina, senior US economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York.

RBC Capital Markets said first-time applications for jobless benefits would have fallen last week exclud-ing the impact of the strike. About 40,000 Verizon workers walked off the job in mid-April. Other econo-mists blamed the spike in claims on difficulties adjusting the data due to seasonal variations and other factors.

Unadjusted jobless claims last week surged in New York state and Pennsylvania, which economists tied to the Verizon dispute. Unadjusted claims increased in Michigan.

“New York state provides unem-ployment insurance benefits for striking workers when an employer hires permanent replacement work-ers,” said Jesse Hurwitz, an economist at Barclays in New York. “Verizon reportedly increased the ranks of replacement workers in the past two weeks, which we believe made strik-ing workers eligible.”

Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn (left) with Mitsubishi Motors Chairman and CEO Osamu Masuko at the end of their joint press conference in Yokohama.

Apple falls below $90 as

iPhone worries fester

By Reuters

NEW YORK: Shares of Apple dropped below $90 yesterdayfor the first time since 2014 as Wall Street worried about slow demand ahead of the antici-pated launch of a new iPhone later this year.

A mainstay of many Wall Street portfolios, Apple fell to as low as $89.47 before recovering slightly to $90.13, a 2.55 percent loss.

Component suppliers in Taiwan will receive fewer orders from Apple in the second half of 2016 than in the same period last year, the Nikkei Asia Review reported yesterday, citing sources. Apple typically launches its high-end phones in September.

QE 9,941.42 +53.03 PTS

DOW 17,746.08 +34.96 PTS

FTSE100 6,104.19 -58.30 PTS

BRENT $46.54 +$0.31

BUSINESS18 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

QE index gains 192.64 points last week

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Exchange’s (QE’s) benchmark index gained 192.64 points, or1.98 percent, during the past trading week when the bourse closed yesterday at 9,941.42 points.

Trading value during the week increased by 5.23 percent to reach about QR1.39bn compared to about QR1.32bn.

The trading volume during the week decreased by 6.71 percent to reach about 39.65 million shares against about 42.5 million shares in the previous week, while the number of transactions rose by 12.17 percent, to reach 24,661 transactions as com-pared to 21,986 transactions.

Market cap rose by 1.58 percent to reach about QR535.09bn compared to about QR526.76bn at the end of previous week.

Banking and Financial Services sector led traded value during the week accounting for 28.98 percent of the total. Industries sector accounted for 26.28 percent. Consumer Goods and Services sector accounted for 17.22 percent and Real Estate sector accounted for 10.60 percent. Bank-ing and Financial Services sector led

traded volume in the week with 35.73 percent of the total traded volume.

Industries sector accounted for 20.21 percent. Real Estate sec-tor accounted for 18.42 percent and Consumer Goods and Services sector accounted for 9.09 percent.

Banking and Financial Serv-ices sector led traded number of transactions during the week with 27.85 percent of the total transac-tions. Industries sector accounted for 22.13 percent. Real Estate sec-tor accounted for 15.17 percent and Consumer Goods and Services sector accounted for 14.11 percent. From the 44 listed companies 33 ended during the week higher, while nine fell and two remained unchanged.

Medicare Group led trading value during the week which accounted for 10.55 percent of the total. Qatari Inves-tors Group accounted for 10.04 percent and Gulf Warehousing accounted for 6.02 percent, reports QNA.

When compared on daily basis the QE index gained 53.03 points, or 0.54 percent, yesterday compared to previous day.

The volume of the shares traded yesterday reached to about 10.29 million from about 8.82 million on Wednesday and the value of shares increased to about QR330.90m from about QR300.06m on the previous day.

Indices of six sectors ended in the green and one in red territory.

QE Total Return Index gained 0.54 percent to 16,084.56 points. QE Al Rayan Islamic Index gained 0.86 percent to 3,938.21 points and QE All Share Index gained 0.45 per-ent to 2,778.76 points.

Market cap rose by 1.58 percent to reach about QR535.09bn.

Reuters

LONDON: The Bank of England (BoE) said Britain’s economy would slow sharply, and could even fall into recession, if the country voted to leave the European Union and said there were limits to what the bank could do about it.

In its starkest warning so far about the impact of an “Out” vote in the June 23 referendum, the central bank said sterling could fall sharply and unem-ployment would probably rise.

“In that scenario we would expect a material slowing in growth, a notable rise in inflation, a challenging trade-off,” BoE Governor Mark Carney told a news conference.

“Of course there’s a range of possi-ble scenarios around those directions, which could possibly include a tech-nical recession,” he said in response to questions from reporters.

Jitters about the referendum are already weighing on the economy and the central bank trimmed its growth forecast for this year to 2.0 percent from February’s estimate of 2.2 percent, even if Britain votes to stay in the EU.

Carney said there there were limits to what the BoE could do in response to an “Out” vote.

“Monetary policy cannot immedi-ately offset all the effects of a shock,” he said.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who along with finance minister George Osborne, has tried to focus voters on what Brexit would mean for their incomes, said the central bank “couldn’t be more clear” that leaving the EU was a risk.

Opinion polls suggest British vot-ers have been relatively resistant so far to warnings about the economic costs of Brexit, with voting intentions in many polls roughly evenly split.

But Carney’s comments ahead of Scotland’s 2014 referendum on the costs of independence were viewed as swaying some voters.

He is due to make a high-profile

speech at London’s Mansion House a week before the vote, alongside Osborne, giving them another platform to speak about the dangers of Brexit. Supporters of Brexit argue Britain would benefit from less EU regula-tion and could strike better overseas trade deals on its own.

Some have accused Carney of over-stepping the central bank’s line of political neutrality.

Sterling rose to a six-day high against the dollar after the Bank’s pol-icymakers voted unanimously to keep interest rates on hold, pouring cold water on talk that at least one policy-maker might vote for a cut. Gilts were little changed after the announcement.

The BoE said half of sterling’s 9 percent slide over the past six months was probably due to the referendum

and said it could “depreciate further, perhaps sharply” after an “Out” vote.

Britain’s government and inter-national bodies have also warned against leaving the EU. The Interna-tional Monetary Fund is expected to weigh in again on Friday.

Former finance minister Norman Lamont, who served under prime min-ister John Major in the 1990s, said the BoE’s warnings of economic trouble after a vote to leave carried their own risks.

“The governor should be careful that he doesn’t cause a crisis,” he said. “If his unwise words become self-ful-filling, the responsibility will be ... the governor’s alone.”

Carney said it was the BoE’s duty to speak about the short-term eco-nomic risks of leaving the bloc.

The Bank cut its forecasts for growth in the next three years due to lower productivity and more caution from households about spending. It sees growth at 2.3 percent next year and in 2018, down from 2.4 percent and 2.5 percent in February.

These forecasts worked on the assumption that Britain would vote to stay in the EU. The only conces-sion made to the referendum was to assume that around half the slide in sterling over the past six months was temporary.

In two years’ time, inflation is forecast to reach a fraction over its 2 percent target, essentially unchanged from the forecast in February.

Most economists expect the BoE to raise interest rates early next year if Britain stays in the EU.

Brexit slowdown could lead to recession: BoE

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney (left) delivers the quarterly Inflation report in London, yesterday.

Ford defends CEO against shareholder gripes on stock priceBloomberg

WILMINGTON: Ford Motor Co Exec-utive Chairman Bill Ford defended his chief executive officer, Mark Fields, against complaints at the shareholders meeting about the automaker’s sink-ing stock price, including a request to bring back former CEO Alan Mulally.

“Mark has a different style, but look at the results,” Ford said at the meet-ing in Wilmington, Delaware, to an investor who requested that Mulally be brought back as an adviser to boost the stock price. “Alan did a terrific job and there’s no question about it. And yes, he was really good with all of our constituents, but so is Mark.”

The automaker has generated record profits since Fields replaced the retiring Mulally as CEO on July 1, 2014, yet investors traded down the shares 23 percent from then through Wednesday on concern that the U.S. auto market is peaking and fears over tech giants like Google elbowing into the car business. Industrywide sales have risen 3.4 percent this year after a record 17.5 million in 2015. Ford’s market share climbed to 15.6 percent, from 15 percent, in this year’s first four months, helping the company book record net income of $2.5bn in the first

quarter. “It’s not clear yet to the mar-ket where this whole mobility world is going and who the winners are going to be, who the losers are going to be,” Bill Ford said. “They see tech compa-nies coming into this space and they wonder what our role is going to be. Our goal then, over this next year or so, is to clarify that as best we can.”

Shareholders expressed frustra-tion at the declining share price during a time of prosperity, and some drew connections to Fields’s tenure at the top. The stock fell 9.1 percent last year and was down 5.5 percent this year through Wednesday. Yesterday Ford declined 0.3 percent to $13.28 at 12:31 p.m. New York time.

“Ford stock price and its direction is really unsatisfactory,” Roger Hey-mann, a shareholder from Rockville, Maryland, told the company’s direc-tors. “No disrespect is meant, but it’s been decreasing Mr. Fields since you took over.”

Since Ford on April 28 posted pre-tax earnings of $3.8 billion, a record for any quarter, its shares slid 2.5 per-cent through yesterday.

Heymann criticized Fields, 55, for his “growing outside activities” such as joining International Business Machines Corp.’s board and becoming chair-man of the US-China Business Council.

Ford Executive Chairman William Clay Ford, Jr. speaks with shareholders before the start of the Ford 61st Annual Meeting of Shareholders at the Hotel DuPont yesterday in Wilmington, Delaware.

VW gets ready

to move on

comeback

plan in US

WOLFSBURG: Volkswagen hopes to reach a final settlement with the US authorities over the diesel emis-sions scandal next month so that it can get moving on a recovery plan which will see the launch of several new crossover and electric vehi-cles, its sales chief said yesterday.

VW aims to expand its elec-tric-vehicle offerings in the United States to meet a growing demand for green cars and help restore its image, VW brand sales chief Juer-gen Stackmann said in an interview published yesterday.

“A final agreement with US authorities would certainly pro-vide relief and, at the same time, give the go-ahead to look and plan ahead”, Stackmann said.

VW reached an outline agree-ment with the US authorities last month to buy back or fix about a half million polluting diesel cars and set up environmental and con-sumer compensation funds but a final deal must be reached by June 21.

Analysts have said Europe’s biggest automaker faces a doubly difficult problem in trying to make headway in the United States as even before the scandal it was seen as notoriously slow to refresh mod-els and catch up with new market trends. The VW brand’s current US product lineup is heavy on compact cars and mid-size sedans at a time when consumers favor sport-util-ity vehicles (SUVs) in various sizes.

VW will launch a new mid-sized SUV and a re-designed Tiguan cross-over next year, assuming that recalls and buybacks of tainted diesel mod-els have won back the trust of the market, Stackmann said.

“We are not working on a defen-sive strategy for the US but what we want to achieve in North Amer-ica is not only to gain a foothold but to grow again,” the executive said.

VW is planning an all-new fam-ily of electric cars based on its new MEB modular production platform.

Foxconn founder tells Sharp staff layoffs needed to begin revival

Reuters

TOKYO/TAIPEI: Foxconn founder Terry Gou said there would have to be layoffs at Sharp Corp to turn around the ailing Japanese company, but pledged that wages would rise and profit-shar-ing would again be the norm.

“Unfortunately, a close review of the com-pany’s operations makes it clear that the level of inefficiency throughout Sharp means that a turnaround ... can only take place if there is a reduction in costs, and that comes with a very regrettable need to reduce Sharp’s workforce,” Gou wrote in an open letter, seen by Reuters, to Sharp staff yesterday.

Sharp earlier reported its annual losses tre-bled from a year earlier.

Taiwan’s Foxconn, the world’s largest con-tract electronics manufacturer, has battled to seal a $3.5bn deal to give it a two-thirds stake in Sharp as the Japanese display maker seeks a return to profit in the face of slowing smartphone sales. The letter said staff cuts would be carried out “responsibly and sensitively,” but didn’t pro-vide figures. A person familiar with the matter said cuts could total 3,000 in Japan, and more when Sharp’s global operations are included.

Foxconn confirmed the letter was a personal note to all Sharp employees from Gou and Tai Jeng-wu, Foxconn’s vice chairman and the newly-appointed CEO at Sharp.

Sharp named Tai to succeed Kozo Takahashi, becoming the first outsider to lead a company that started out making belt buckles and mechani-cal pencils a century ago. Tai’s 30-year Foxconn career includes running its vast operations at

Shenzhen in China. He also played a key role in the Sharp stake negotiations, people at Fox-conn said. “Tai is No.2 at Hon Hai. He speaks Japanese. He was selected from a comprehen-sive perspective,” Takahashi said at an earnings briefing, referring to Foxconn by its formal name, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.

Tai will be one of nine new board members at Sharp, Takahashi said, adding Sharp aims to finalize the stake sale to Foxconn by the end of June, earlier than an initial October 5 deadline.

Gou’s letter underscores how last month’s signing of the stake deal was just the start of a turnaround at Sharp, which has struggled even after two bank bail-outs.

The billionaire Foxconn founder will person-ally guarantee the buyback of 25bn yen ($230m) worth of preferred shares that Sharp issued to a corporate turnaround fund last year in exchange

for a bail-out. Gou said his move was aimed to speed up a merit-based stock reward program for Sharp employees.

Gou believes profit-sharing is key to retaining talent, said a person familiar with his thinking.

“I can also assure you that the wage cuts and reductions in year-end bonuses are a thing of the past,” Gou wrote to Sharp staff, saying pay and annual bonuses would return to their orig-inal levels as of this month.

Sharp and Japanese peers such as Sony Corp, once synonymous with cutting-edge electron-ics, have in recent years been out-manoeuvred by upstart Asian rivals. A takeover by Foxconn should help Sharp expand sales channels for its displays. In return, Foxconn will gain control of Sharp’s advanced display technology, and strengthen its pricing power with Apple Inc, a major client of both companies.

Reuters

LONDON: Higher oil prices helped lift European shares yes-terday, following earlier falls in Asian stocks, and led Ger-man government bond yields to bounce off one-month lows, while the dollar powered higher against the yen.

Wall Street, where a sharp fall on Wednesday set the gloomy tone in Asia, was set to open higher, according to index futures.

The pan-European FTSEu-rofirst stocks index, which opened almost 1 percent lower, was up about 0.8 percent, led higher by oil stocks.

Germany’s Dax index gained 0.6 percent and Britain’s FTSE 100 added 0.4 percent.

Earlier, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slipped 0.4 percent, mov-ing back toward a two-month low touched on Tuesday.

But Japan’s Nikkei stock index erased early losses and ended up 0.4 percent as the yen fell against the dollar.

The gloomy tone in stocks markets had been set in the US markets on Wednesday.

The Dow Jones Indus-trial Average fell 1.2 percent on Wednesday, its biggest one-day fall since February 11, though this only reversed Tuesday’s 1.2 per-cent rise.

German 10-year yields, the benchmark for eurozone bor-rowing costs, hit a one-month low of 0.1 percent in early trade but reversed course as oil and stocks rose in price.

They last stood at 0.15 percent, up 3 basis points on the day.

“It shows that investors are very reluctant to buy Bunds at these low yields,” said Soci-ete Generale strategist Ciaran O’Hagan, pointing to fears of a repeat in the sharp rise in yields seen after record lows were struck in April last year.

In currency markets, the dol-lar strengthened 0.9 percent to a two-week high against the yen after an academic seen to be close to Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the BOJ was likely to expand its mone-tary stimulus soon.

Takatoshi Ito, a former sen-ior finance ministry official, said the BOJ, which introduced nega-tive rates earlier this year, could act in June or July.

This follows a series of

warnings from Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso that Tokyo would intervene to curb any excessive one-sided gains in the yen.

“With policy easing specu-lation gaining ground and the Finance Minister talking down the yen, it is clear they do not want a stronger currency,” said Niels Christensen, FX strategist at Nordea.

The yen was last at 109.32 to the dollar, having touched an 18-month high of 105.55 on May 3.

The euro weakened 0.4 per-cent to $1.13.81 and sterling was flat at $1.4439 after Bank of England policymakers voted unanimously to keep interest rates on hold.

T h e B r i t i s h e c o n -omy has shown signs of weakening recently, with money

markets pricing in a chance of an interest rate cut by the end of the year, and some in the market had speculated at least one pol-icymaker could vote for lower rates.

Oil prices rose after the International Energy Agency raised its 2016 global oil demand growth forecast and said output disruptions could reduce a sup-ply glut.

Brent crude was last up 1 per-cent at $48 a barrel while US West Texas Intermediate was up 1.4 percent at nearly $47 per barrel, their highest in six months.

Investors were also watching Brazil, where the Senate voted to suspend President Dilma Rouss-eff prior to putting her on trial for breaking budget laws.

The real was 0.1 percent stronger at 3.45 per dollar.

QE Index 9,941.42 0.54 %

QE Total Return Index 16,084.56 0.54 %

QE Al Rayan Islamic Index 3,938.21 0.86 %

QE All Share Index 2,778.76 0.45 %

QE All Share Banks & Financial Services 2,667.98 0.13 %

QE All Share Industrials 3,098.74 0.74 %

QE All Share Transportation 2,511.86 0.49 %

QE All Share Real Estate 2,482.35 1.02 %

QE All Share Insurance 4,090.2 0.34 %

QE All Share Telecoms 1,138.57 1.72 %

QE All Share Consumer Goods & Services 6,692.92 0.48 %

QE INDICES SUMMARY QATAR STOCK EXCHANGE

QE MARKET SUMMARY COMPARISON

GOLD AND SILVER

WORLD STOCK INDICES

12-05-2016 Today 11-05-2016 Previous dayIndex 9,941.42 9,888.39

Change 53.03 4.80

% 0.54 0.05

YTD% 4.68 5.19

Volume 10,293,190 8,822,333

Value (QAR) 330,896,075.28 300,059,101.49

Trades 5,330 5,315

Up 27 | Down 08 | Unchanged 06

GOLD QR148.7850 per grammeSILVER QR2.0255 per gramme

Index Day’s Close Pt Chg % Chg Year High Year LowAll Ordinaries 5423.433 -11.357 -0.21 5483.7 4762.1

Cac 40 Index/D 4357.9 41.23 0.96 4607.69 3892.46

Dj Indu Average 17711.12 -217.23 -1.21 18351.4 15370.3

Hang Seng Inde/D 19915.46 -139.83 -0.7 21794.84 18278.8

Iseq Overall/D 6203.48 41.88 0.68 6791.68 5611.89

Karachi 100 In/D 36048.76 -217.47 -0.6 36412.23 29785

Nikkei 225 Index 16646.34 67.33 0.41 18951.12 14865.77

S&P 500 Index/D 0 0 0 2134.72 1810.1

EXCHANGE RATECurrency Buying Selling

US$ QR 3.6305 QR 3.6500

UK QR 5.2258 QR 5.2991

Euro QR 4.1217 QR 4.1798

CA$ QR 2.8131 QR 2.8685

Swiss Fr QR 3.7243 QR 3.7792

Yen QR 0.0330 QR 0.0337

Aus$ QR 2.6447 QR 2.6971

Ind Re QR 0.0541 QR 0.0552

Pak Re QR 0.0344 QR 0.0352

Peso QR 0.0775 QR 0.0791

SL Re QR 0.0246 QR 0.0253

Taka QR 0.0458 QR 0.0468

Nep Re QR 0.0340 QR 0.0347

SA Rand QR 0.2407 QR 0.2455

Bloomberg

NEW YORK: Oil traded near $46 a barrel in New York as Canadian producers planned to resume oil-sands production amid a reduction in crude supply in other parts of the world.

Futures seesawed between gains and losses in New York after earlier touching a six-month intraday high amid concern over a reduction in global oil supply. Producers in Canada plan to resume output at some oil-sands sites after wildfires took production offline, while Nigeria said militant attacks have cut output by as much as 600,000 barrels a day. US inventories dropped by 3.4 million bar-rels last week, government data showed Wednesday.

Canadian mines and drilling projects north of Fort McMurray are bringing back some of the roughly 1 mil-lion barrels a day of supply that was curbed amid fires, Suncor Energy Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Wil-liams said Tuesday. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. said it restored normal production rates at its Hori-zon oil-sands site in Alberta and Enbridge Inc. expects to restart its Athabasca crude pipeline this weekend.

“The market is looking at the Canadian oil sands while they come back to production over the next few weeks,” Bart Melek, head of global commodity strat-egy at TD Securities in Toronto, said by telephone. “It may be a month before everything is back on track.”

Outages in Canada may continue into summer depend-ing on the extent of damage and the unavailability of staff, the Energy Information Administration said in its This Week in Petroleum report.

West Texas Intermediate for June delivery fell 12 cents to $46.11 a barrel at 1:24 pm on the New York Mercantile Exchange after earlier rising to $47.02 a barrel. Brent for July settlement declined 17 cents to $47.43 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.

While a deteriorating security situation has curbed Nigerian supply, gains from Iran and Iraq have helped to boost Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Coun-tries production to about 33 million barrels a day. Iran’s crude production has returned to pre-sanction levels as the nation ramps up output to regain market share, according to the International Energy Agency.

he global surplus in the first half of this year will probably be smaller than previously estimated because of robust demand in India and other emerging nations.

Oil trades near $46 as Canada output resumes

INTERNATIONAL MARKETS - A LIST OF SHARES FROM THE WORLD

A C C-A/D 1458 -10.05 7737

Aarti Drugs-B/D 457 -2.3 1725

Aban Offs-A/D 211.3 6.35 499017

Aegis Logis-B/D 114.75 0 39707

Alembic-B/D 36.25 -0.4 32938

Alok Indus-A/D 4.04 -0.02 1081198

Apollo Tyre-A/D 158.6 5.2 970782

Asahi I Glass-/D 158 2.55 20166

Ashok Leyland-/D 104.05 0.1 1299101

Ballarpur In-B/D 16.65 0.25 95804

Bata India-A/D 572.6 -1.35 21579

Bayer Crop-A/D 4062 113 7768

Beml Ltd-A/D 917.65 5.85 18841

Bh Electronic-/D 1163.55 6.4 14251

Bhansali Eng-T/D 21.2 1.25 285095

Bharat Bijle-B/D 1067.75 10.5 13358

Bharatgears-B/D 82.9 1.05 4076

Bhartiya Int-B/D 544 -1 5115

Bhel-A/D 125.85 -0.4 487424

Bom.Burmah-B/D 415.15 18.5 18005

Bombay Dyeing-/D 48.05 0.55 82716

Camph.& All-B/D 590 1.75 2185

Canfin Homes-B/D 1188.45 20.7 5113

Caprihans-Xc/D 94 2.1 2461

Castrol India-/D 427.7 4.15 58343

Century Enka-B/D 211.3 5.1 29432

Century Text-A/D 621.75 3.45 91330

Chambal Fert-B/D 64.5 0.85 202513

Chola Invest-A/D 886 -14.05 2583

Chowgule St-T/D 16.65 -0.85 2311

Cipla-A/D 534.7 -1.15 249404

City Union Bk-/D 96 -0.05 3502

Colgate-A/D 837.05 0.7 12059

Container Cor-/D 1333.2 30.6 11557

Dai-Tichi Kar-/D 408 -0.6 2089

Dcm Shram Ind-/D 145.6 1.4 7887

Dhampur Sugar-/D 91.8 -0.7 222003

Dr. Reddy-A/D 2973.85 104.65 158515

E I H-B/D 106.05 2.15 7448

E.I.D Parry-A/D 228.85 -5.55 97888

Eicher Motor-A/D 19749.55 -231.9 3943

Electrosteel-B/D 19.2 0.35 61613

Emco-B/D 26.75 0.4 1273

Escorts Fin-B/D 4.26 0.25 44207

Escorts-A/D 177 -1.55 217961

Eveready Indu-/D 239.55 -1.25 34084

F D C-B/D 179.35 0.1 1825

Federal Bank-A/D 48.85 0.35 565542

Ferro Alloys-B/D 4.55 0.01 9420

Fgp Ltd-Xd/D 2.45 0.1 1242

Finolex-A/D 378.55 1.9 7435

Gail-A/D 387.8 1.05 72198

Galada Power-B/D 13 -0.44 4437

Gammon India-T/D 11.46 0.07 22942

Garden P -B/D 27.65 0.25 9946

Godfrey Phil-B/D 839.85 -2.3 8958

Goodricke-B/D 178.9 1.7 8616

Goodyear I -B/D 509.5 9.75 1180

Hcl Infosys-B/D 40.65 0.65 306618

Him.Fut.Comm-T/D 16.9 -0.1 1751715

Himat Seide-B/D 231.2 4.15 44909

Hind Motors-T/D 5.1 -0.06 8451

Hind Org Chem-/D 16.6 0.3 8502

Hind Unilever-/D 853.15 -9.55 56247

Hind.Petrol-A/D 828.75 -6.7 69072

Hindalco-A/D 93.4 1.8 968022

Hous Dev Fin-A/D 1195.35 -8.3 56229

I F C I-A/D 24.55 0.05 432592

Idbi-A/D 68.25 0.55 291479

India Cement-A/D 92.1 2.8 504694

India Glycol-B/D 88.9 0.95 5597

Indian Hotel-A/D 106.25 0.8 53790

Indo-Tcount-T/D 965.65 8.95 7795

Indusind-A/D 1062 8.7 32858

J.B.Chemical-B/D 256.05 8.55 11154

Jagatjit Ind-X/D 74.8 0.3 1385

Jagson Phar-B/D 35 0.9 5225

Jamnaauto-B/D 148 4.8 138661

Jbf Indu-B/D 226.2 10.95 52629

Jct Elect P -B/D 0.3 0 1154

Jct Ltd-B/D 3.65 0.01 706116

Jenson&Nich.-B/D 7.64 -0.17 4842

Jik Indust-B/D 0.78 -0.02 1520

Jindal Drill-B/D 179 29.5 133662

Jktyre&Ind-A/D 83.8 0.9 150081

Jmc Projects-T/D 274.7 12.2 22776

Kabra Extr-B/D 95.25 5.7 6680

Kajaria Cer-A/D 1076 7.2 2921

Kakatiya Cem-B/D 461.5 41.9 174648

Kalyani Stel-T/D 160.3 1.3 15053

Kanoria Chem-B/D 63.5 1.25 5855

Kg Denim-B/D 92.15 4.45 67158

Kinetic Eng-B/D 87.5 7.9 14054

Kopran-B/D 52.95 -0.45 39267

Lok.Hous&Con-B/D 5.38 0.27 27950

Lumax Ind-B/D 494.9 8.2 7385

Lupin-A/D 1613.65 20.35 45480

Lyka Labs-T/D 73.55 -1 15419

Mafatlal Ind-B/D 346 -2.8 1950

Mah.Seamless-B/D 208 10.2 39654

Mangalam Cem-B/D 264.5 -1.3 72555

Maral Overs-B/D 30 2.2 13252

Mastek-B/D 144.9 -0.4 21940

Max Financial-/D 370.1 9.1 2856

Mrpl-A/D 69.75 -2.3 1560650

Nagreeka Ex-B/D 31.25 3.55 2382

Nagreeka Ex-B/D 31.25 3.55 2382

Nahar Spg.-B/D 113.5 6.3 56448

Nation Alum -A/D 43.05 0.65 87425

Navneet Edu-B/D 90.2 1.1 31363

Nepc India-T/D 1.44 0.06 7987

Neuland Lab-B/D 726 32 1264

Nrb Bearings-B/D 116 0.9 4313

O N G C-A/D 206.7 1.05 321338

Ocl India-B/D 506 0 1122

Oil Country-B/D 30.6 -1.85 107238

Onward Tech-B/D 74 0.65 1614

Orchid Pharm-B/D 40.6 0.6 93509

Orient Hotel-T/D 22 0.35 1850

Orient.Carb.-T/D 493 16.9 1394

Orient.Carb.-T/D 493 16.9 1394

Oudh Sugar-B/D 98.15 5.1 263346

Patspin India-/D 8.6 0.36 1902

Punjab Chem.-B/D 169.5 -2 4698

Radico Khait-B/D 89.8 -1.95 34460

Rallis India-A/D 209.55 6.25 113420

Rallis India-A/D 209.55 6.25 113420

Reliance Indus/D 421 1.5 56219

Ruchi Soya-B/D 23.9 0 47670

Saur.Cem-B/D 62.6 1.65 65350

Thirumalai-B/D 241.5 -5.4 9842

Timexgroup-T/D 35.5 0.2 71976

Tinplate-B/D 67.5 1.35 32219

Ucal Fuel-B/D 114.2 7.2 56575

Ucal Fuel-B/D 114.2 7.2 56575

Unitech P -A/D 4.12 0 4609500

Uppergsugar-T/D 190.7 5 81993

3I Group/D 480.5 3.4 343903

Assoc.Br.Foods/D 3052 -52 576114

Barclays/D 165.25 1.7 16545892

Bp/D 366.9 5.7 14895624

Brit Am Tobacc/D 4244.5 -0.5 752939

Bt Group/D 442.25 5.35 4784357

Centrica/D 205 -5 8383773

Gkn/D 280.2 -0.2 1318223

Hsbc Holdings/D 431.9 0.75 9789906

Kingfisher/D 362 -1 1619401

Land Secs Grou/D 1144 -7 708098

Legal & Genera/D 216.9 0 3592797

Lloyds Bnk Grp/D 65.77 0.08 34828900

Marks & Sp./D 421.2 3.2 1200759

Next/D 5320.1064 -15 230078

Pearson/D 815 7 706565

Prudential/D 1300 -7.5 1237316

Rank Group/D 248.3 10.9 421562

Rentokil Initi/D 178.4 -0.6 483726

Rolls Royce Pl/D 658 -0.5 1271294

Rsa Insrance G/D 482.3 2.6 388298

Sainsbury(J)/D 256.9 -6.1 2296044

Schroders/D 2495 20 109102

Severn Trent/D 2262 32 105129

Smith&Nephew/D 1160 3 515994

Smiths Group/D 1107 10 169744

Standrd Chart /D 508.2 10.9 3797789

Tate & Lyle/D 616.5 7.5 153886

Tesco/D 158.4368 -0.9 11555997

Unilever/D 3177 26.5 801859

United Util Gr/D 955 7.5 376292

Vodafone Group/D 224.85 2.55 19777945

Whitbread/D 3969 39 202460

COMPANY CLOSE NET VOLUME

NAME CHG TRADED

COMPANY CLOSE NET VOLUME

NAME CHG TRADED

COMPANY CLOSE NET VOLUME

NAME CHG TRADED

COMPANY CLOSE NET VOLUME

NAME CHG TRADED

LONDON

Higher oil lifts European stocks; bond yields rise

BUSINESS 19FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

BUSINESS VIEWS20 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Crowdfunders make better decisions than VCsBy Vivek Wadhwa

The Washington Post

There are fears that another Ice Age is about to hit Silicon Valley because of the implosion of its unicorns — start-

ups valued at more than one billion dollars. By one estimate there were 229 such compa-nies in January of this year. Their valuations are dropping precipitously because they were overpriced and overhyped. The fear is that venture capital will dry up and hurt the inno-vation ecosystem.

In previous eras, such a setback to ven-ture capitalists (VCs) would surely have had a chilling effect on the innovation ecosystem because startups were dependent on their funding. But in today’s era of exponential tech-nologies , there will hardly be a blip.

To start with, the cost of building new technologies has dropped so significantly that inventors no longer need venture cap-ital. The desktop computers, server farms, racks of hard disks, and enterprise software that were needed would cost hundreds of

thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars. Today, there is on-demand computing and cloud storage — which can be purchased for almost nothing from companies such as Ama-zon, Google, and Microsoft. And tools such as sensors and 3D printers, which are needed for building sophisticated medical devices and robots, are inexpensive. What costs the most in Silicon Valley is rent and food. But you can share an apartment and live on pizza and ramen noodles.

And instead of begging venture capitalists, angel investors, or friends for the $50,000-$100,000 that it typically costs to start a technology company, founders can go directly to the people they are building their products for. They can post a video of a heart-felt pitch and demonstrate a prototype of their ideas on sites such as Indiegogo , Kickstarter and Plum Alley. If they get funded they’ll know they have a good idea; otherwise is time to go back to the drawing board and come up with something better.

The crowd makes better decisions than venture capitalists do. With crowdfunding, there is direct feedback from the market and a strong connection between the inventor and

the funder. The community of funders feels a sense of ownership for the product and helps spread the word. And there is no filter such as a venture capitalist who has his own race and gender biases and only invests in the same trendy technologies as other VC firms.

The failure rate of crowdfunded projects is remarkably low. Three quarters of venture cap-ital investments fail to return investor capital. Yet only 9 percent of crowdfunded projects fail to deliver on what they promised, according to Ethan Mollick of University of Pennsylvania — who researched 47,188 Kickstarter projects.

When entrepreneurs take money from venture capitalists, they know that this is com-ing from deep pockets and is just a financial investment. When dealing directly with cus-tomers it is personal; so entrepreneurs put in extraordinary effort and spend their own money to fulfill their promises. This is what leads to better outcomes.

One of the best examples of a technol-ogy that would not have seen the light of day without crowdfunding is virtual reality. As Mollick explained , this was largely ignored by traditional funders after it failed to gain traction in the 1990s. In 2012, a 19-year old

Palmer Luckey, who had built a prototype of a virtual reality headset in his parent’s garage, launched a Kickstarter campaign for a com-mercial product. His goal was to raise $250,000 but there was so much demand that he ended up getting $2.4 million in orders. The product he later developed, Oculus Rift, was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. This set off a frenzy of funding by venture capitalists and greatly accelerated the progress of a world-changing technology.

So far, there have been limits to what start-ups could offer the crowd. They could only pre-sell their product and offer perks such as T-shirts and badges. This is about to change.

Starting May 16 , the Securities and Exchange Commission is rolling out a new program that will allow private companies to use crowdfunding to sell securities -- up to $1 million over a 12-month period. This was a provision of the 2012 Jumpstart Our Busi-ness Startups Act (or JOBS Act) to assist small companies with capital formation.

It remains to be seen if equity crowdfunding achieves the same success as product crowd-funding. The stakes are now higher and the risks of fraud are much greater.

By Jeanna Smialek

Bloomberg

For Janet Yellen’s Fed, 2016 is beginning to look all too familiar — another saga of disappointment

and downgrade.Last year, Federal Reserve

officials started off signaling two interest-rate increases but those plans didn’t work out: Weak first-quarter US growth delayed action in June, international con-cerns took September off the table and liftoff finally happened in December.

This year began on a sim-ilar footing. Fed officials were optimistic as they entered 2016, projecting four hikes at their meeting in December. But they downgraded that expectation in March to just two moves, after China concerns soured the out-look. Now even that forecast is looking doubtful.

First-quarter growth data have again disappointed and markets see very little chance of a hike in June, even as offi-cials insist that the meeting is

“live.” Geopolitical risks loom — including a June 23 referen-dum on Britain’s inclusion in the European Union, renewed con-cern of a Greek debt default in July and the US presidential elec-tion in November.

While many economists still see September as a likely candi-date for 2016’s first rate increase, market pricing points to one hike at most, probably in December. That divergence of views under-lines how hard it is to forecast the pace of monetary tighten-ing amid global uncertainty and while the US expansion remains less than robust.

A downgrade to Fed opti-mism “could occur again this year, for different reasons than last year,” said Laura Ros-ner, senior US economist at BNP Paribas in New York, who doesn’t expect the Fed to raise rates at all this year. “It’s difficult for them to incorporate these headwinds and shocks into their baseline scenario.”

On one hand, US growth and manufacturing data have been weaker than expected. At the same time, the job market is chugging along, if more slowly, and growth in China is showing

a nascent stabilization. The Fed could get more clarity on the outlook today, when US retail sales data for April are set for release. The Fed has five more meetings this year but only the gatherings in June, September and December are followed by a scheduled press conference with Chair Yellen.

While officials say they can move at any meeting, “it’s revealed preference that they prefer to move on a meeting with a press conference,” said Michael Gapen, chief US economist at Barclays New York.

Out of those three months, June seems like a long shot. Investors see almost no chance of a move and the Fed could harm the economy if it sprung a surprise that triggered financial market volatility.

As Goldman Sachs economist Daan Struyven pointed out in a research note this week, 90 per-cent of all interest-rate increases over the past 25 years were at least 70 percent discounted by markets ahead of the move, and at least 50 percent discounted 30 days before the meeting. Based on the gauge of market expecta-tions that Goldman uses, there’s only a 12 percent expectation of a June hike right now. “The low market-implied odds, softer data, and uncertainty about the mon-etary transmission mechanism lead us to believe that a June hike is now rather unlikely,” Struyven wrote. Nonetheless, Fed officials including St. Louis Fed President James Bullard and San Francisco Fed President John Williams have said that June remains an option, and Bullard told report-ers in Palo Alto on May 5 that

“the committee is going to do what it thinks is right, regardless of what markets think.”

Such signaling could serve to make markets realize that a hike is more than a tail risk so that “when the stars line up” and the increase is appropriate, things go smoothly, said Gen-nadiy Goldberg, US strategist at TD Securities in New York.

“September offers them a more conducive point to hike rates, but there are some argu-ments that they aren’t going to want to move right before the election,” said Goldberg, who expects an increase that month nonetheless.

Fed faces 2015 deja vu as markets discount rate-hike chances

In Brazil market, foreigners are exiting as locals enter

By Denyse Godoy

Bloomberg

Big global players like Will Landers and Mark Mobius may have driven Brazil’s world-beating stock rally for most of this year, but it’s the local investor community that’s now tak-

ing the lead.After sitting on the sidelines as lawmakers’

push to oust President Dilma Rousseff spurred a wave of buying by foreigners, local investors including mom-and-pop types are suddenly returning to the market and now account for almost a fifth of all trades, the highest portion since 2012, exchange data show. That their change-of-heart coincides with the final days of

Rousseff’s administration after the Senate voted yes-terday to suspend her from office is no coincidence.

Just ask Giancarlo Tognato. The 51-year-old was forced to shutter his car-repair shop in an upscale Sao Paulo neigh-bourhood late last year as the economy sank deeper into its worst recession in a century. Hoping to make back some of his losses, he’s now stepping up investments in stocks that depend on the local economy, essentially bet-ting against the person he blames for his misfortune: Rousseff. “Locals who feel every little change in the

mood are starting to get more optimistic with the prospects for the economy with a new gov-ernment,” said Beatriz Fortunato, a money manager at Studio Investimentos in Rio de Janeiro who helps oversee 400m reais ($115m) in assets. “The trend is that flows into stocks increase.”

The Ibovespa rose 1.4 percent to 53,498.25 at 12:25 pm in New York. Brazil’s real halted a two-day rally after the central bank inter-vened to weaken the currency, sending it down 0.7 percent to 3.4771 per dollar.

Local investors like Tognato poured a combined 1.1bn reais into stocks this month through May 9, while foreigners pulled 1.4bn reais out, according to the most recent data from BM&FBovespa SA, Brazil’s stock exchange operator. While locals run the risk of joining the party too late — a growing chorus of asset managers say further gains are limited until Brazil actually turns the corner — it signals a clear shift in attitude: Brazilians are feeling better about their long-term outlook.

In Tognato’s own words: “I know the country can’t be fixed overnight, but there’s no where for it to go but up.”

That’s a reversal from earlier this year, when it was the overseas cash that drove the euphoric highs and panicked lows that made Brazil the world’s most volatile equity market. The Ibovespa stock index has rallied 39 per-cent in dollar terms this year, the most among major global benchmarks. Mobius, the execu-tive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group, and Landers, a money manager and managing director for BlackRock Inc, were among investors betting that Rousseff’s ouster will usher in a new government better able to revive Latin America’s biggest economy, contain an exploding budget deficit and slow inflation that’s running close to 10 percent.

Local investors including mom-and-pop types are suddenly returning to the market and now account for almost a fifth of all trades, the highest portion since 2012

With crowdfunding, there is direct feedback from the market and a strong connection between the inventor and the funder.

Local investors poured a combined 1.1bn reais into stocks this month through May 9, while foreigners pulled 1.4bn reais out.

Following the Senate vote, Rousseff will step down for as long as 180 days while she stands trial on allegations she illegally financed budget deficits. Investors are specu-lating that Vice President Michel Temer, who is set to take her place, will announce a more market-friendly economic team. Former central bank chief Henrique Meirelles is the front-runner to become his finance minis-ter, according to Temer’s aides.

Mobius said as recently as this month he’s still buying, and Dan Raghoonundon, a Latin America equity research analyst at Janus Capital, said he considers the Ibovespa cheap until it reaches 65,000 points, 23 per-cent higher than Wednesday’s close.

But JPMorgan Chase & Co, Verde Asset Management and Quantitas Asset Manage-ment say future rallies depend on Temer successfully implementing the much-needed reforms.

Traders negotiate the shares of future contracts at Sao Paulo Stock Exchange in Sao Paulo.

Justin Gatlin hopes for solid Shanghai race

PAGE | 23 PAGE | 24

Perera eyes comeback after doping blunder

FRIDAY MAY 13 2016 • 6 SHA’BAAN 1437

www.thepeninsulaqatar.com

@peninsulaqatar @peninsula_qatarthepeninsulaqatar

Daredevils end

Sunrisers’

winning run

Agencies:

HYDERABAD: Quinton de kock gave Delhi Daredevils the perfect start as Sanju Samson and Rishabh Pant finished off with two impressive knocks as they outplayed Sunrisers Hyderabad by seven wickets with 11 deliveries remaining in their IPL match played yesterday.

Kock’s 31-ball knock included two sixes and five boundaries but lack of support from the other end deprived him from making a big part-nership. Samson and Pant made 72 runs for the fourth wicket.

Earlier, Sunrisers Hyderabad got off to a brilliant start as the open-ing duo of David Warner (46) and Shikhar Dhawan (34) fired 51 runs in the powerplay to lay the platform but lost the momentum as the Delhi bowlers bounced back with some brilliant efforts.

For the visitors, Mishra and Coul-ter-Nile picked two wickets while Yadav, Shami and Morris chipped in with one wicket apiece.

“(We were) 20-30 runs short. Bowler hit a good length, hit the hard length. Our batters did not get the job done today,” Sunrisers’ skipper David Warner said after the match.

Delhi Daredevils stand-in cap-tain JP Duminy said; “Back part of our bowling innings, we did excep-tionally well. Always banking on them to strike for us, collective bowl-ing performance. Guys have been responding well, understanding the XI. Youngsters have been perform-ing, they have been responding well in pressure moments.”

The loss also ended Sunrisers’ four-match winning run but they still remain at the top of the table of IPL 2016.

The Peninsula

DOHA: Some of the best Filipino bas-ketball teams in the GCC will converge in Doha to compete for the first PIDC-GCC Invitational Championship Cup which will be held at Al Attiya Arena on June 16 and 17.

Revealing details of the event, Pat Carido, Pinoy Basketball of Qatar (Pibaq) President and Samahang Bas-ketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) Head, said the tournament will witness the participa-tion of prestigious Filipino ball clubs from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The Gulf-wide Filipino bas-ketball tourney is supported by Doha League which will be one the highlights of 118th Philippine Independence Day celebration of the Filipino community in Qatar next month.

“We will ensure that we will hold a truly professional league that will strictly follow the SBP rules,” Carido said, while speaking at the opening of the 2016 Ambassador’s Cup/Oore-doo of Pibaq recently at Al Gharafa Training Gym.

The Cup serves as the league’s prep-aration to the bigger tournament next month, he said at the opening event which saw a spectacular display of col-ours by different teams and attended by bigwigs in the Filipino community.

The opening ceremony was attended by Philippine Ambassador Wilfredo C Santos who led the cere-monial ball toss. Ed Anami, president of United Filipino Organizations in Qatar (UFOQ) and Antonio Valdez Cruz, proto-col and board affairs head of Ooredoo, the tournament’s host were among those present at the event.

The opening game proved to be

highly-competitive as Pampanga (Ali-cafe) escaped a narrow two-point victory, 78-76, over Ilocos (Windmills).

Carido said the new format will not only be highly-competitive but a proud sporting battle among regional team representation back home and enlivening the glorious past of the hard-court stars who are now in their 40s and above.

Three divisions will be competing in the season including Inter Region Division, Aspirants and the Seniors Division.

The 2016 Ambassador’s Cup is fully supported by Qatar Basketball Feder-ation with the Philippine Embassy and UFOQ. It is presented by Alicafe with Diana Jewellery & Watches as major sponsors and Power Horse Energy Drink, Boracay Filipino Restaurant and Control P- Advertising as minor sponsors.

PIDC-GCC Invitational Championship Cup on June 16-17

Philippine Ambassador Wilfredo C Santos (centre) leads the ceremonial ball toss at the opening of the 2016 Ambassador’s Cup at Al Gharafa Training Gym.

The Peninsula

DOHA: The ‘big four’ of the Qatar Stars League (QSL), Al Rayyan, El Jaish, Lekhwiya and Al Sadd will lock horns in the semi-finals of the Emir Cup today hoping to bag top honours in the season-ending championship.

In today’s first semi-final, Al Rayyan, the reigning QSL champions will take on defending Emir Cup champions Al Sadd at Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium. The kick-off is set for 5.30pm.

Coached by Jorge Fossati, Al Rayyan will be looking to conquer the defending champions who were admittedly fortu-nate to edge a formidable Al Gharafa side in the quarterfinals.

Fossati said yesterday that he is expecting his in-form players to guide the team in today’s semi-final clash against Al Sadd.

“I have a simple philosophy. We respect all teams we play. We respect Al Sadd and their quality. But I expect my top players to guide the team home,” Fossati said.

“Al Sadd are a strong side. They have an experienced coach and have won many trophies.”

“Having said that, we have done really well this season,” Fossati said of his Qatar Stars League (QSL) title winning players.

“My confidence is sky high because we have played well. We have done well. We are fully capable of winning this game,” he said. “We have a great oppor-tunity to win this game and reach the final,” he said.

When asked about the influence of captain and striker Rodrigo Tabata, Fos-sati said: “We don’t rely on Tabata alone. We have good players all over the pitch. We have an experienced side. We won the league using everyone’s contribution.”

Tabata will have strikers Sergio Gar-cia and Sebastian Soria up front against Al Sadd.

Al Sadd coach Jesualdo Ferreira said his team ‘feels’ ready.

“For us, this will be like a final. It is do-or-die. We’re taking on the QSL cham-pions. This is a different event to QSL but equally important since every sides thinks

of winning the Emir Cup title,” Ferreira said. “We won’t look at our past games for this clash. It’s a new battle. It will be a different clash. Two strong sides are going to play in this game,” Ferreira said.

“I think everyone knows that this sea-son hasn’t given us any silverware. But this does not mean we have not played well. Everyone at the club, however, feels this a new chance for us to win a tro-phy,” Ferreira said.

“The title Emir Cup is the motiva-tion to do well and it shows the value of winning this event. I think that will make us play to our best potential,” the coach said.

In the second semi-final which will be played at the same venue, Lekhwiya will take on El Jaish for a place in the final with the kick-off set for 8.00pm.

Lekhwiya, coached by Djamel Bel-madi, will be looking for an outright win having struggled in their quarter-finals against Al Sailiyah three days ago.

Belmadi yesterday said his team was highly motivated to win against El Jaish.

The reason for the confidence is sim-ple: Lekhwiya - one of the most consistent sides in QSL - has never won the Emir Cup.

“It will be a strong clash for sure,” Belmadi said yesterday. “We have already played three times this season. But we will be playing to win the game and reach the final because we have never won the Emir Cup title,” he added.

“We will fight all the way and create as many chances we can to score goals. We must play strong up front. I think the game will be very tough. We look forward to creating pressure on our opponents,” he said.

“The team is high spirits. Our last game was very difficult but we managed to win in the last few minutes,” Belamdi said.

Coached by Sabri Lamouchi, El Jaish are one of the most consistent sides in Qatar. They beat Al Ahli 4-2 after con-ceding the first goal in the quarter-finals three days ago.

Lamouchi said his team was primed for a ‘win’.

“We face a strong side but we are ready. The players will do their best,” Lamouchi said yesterday.

“By winning the game, we can get one step closer to winning the title.

We are going to fight, like we do every game we play in an El Jaish jersey,” Lam-ouchi said.

The final of the prestigious Emir Cup will be played on May 20 at the Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium.

Al Rayyan bank on star quality in semis

Officials of respective Emir Cup semi-finalists, El Jaish, Lekhwiya, Al Sadd and Al Rayyan display their team jerseys during a press briefing held at Al Sadd Club in Doha yesterday. Picture by: Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula.

The Peninsula

DOHA: The best sides in the country have reached the semi-finals of the Emir Cup, Hamoud Ali Al Nuaimi, Chairman Competitions Department, QFA, said yesterday, ahead of today’s Emir Cup semi finals.

Both semi-finals will be played at Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium.

“We congratulate the teams that have reached the semi-finals. Without any fear of contradic-tion, we can say the best sides in the country have reached the semi-finals,” Al Nuaimi said.

“We have seen some exciting football in the games leading up to the semi-finals. The quality of football has been assured and engaging,” he added.

“I am sure we will see a packed house for the two games,” he said.

“ We had a technical meeting with club rep-resentatives in which discussed a series of topics. We have arranged family areas, which means we expect families turning up in large numbers,” he said.

Al Nuaimi said fans of Al Rayyan will get to enter Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium through gates 2, 3, 4 and 5 while home fans will use gates 6, 7, 8 and 9. He added that Lekhwiya fans can use gates 2, 3, 4 and 5 while fans of El Jaish will be allowed through gates 6, 7, 8 and 9.

The best sides have reached the semi-finals: QFA official

A young Emir Cup football fan takes part in fun-filled activities at Souq Waqif last weekend. The Qatar Football Association (QFA) is organising fun-filled activities this weekend at Villaggio Mall for all football fans in Qatar, ahead of the Emir Cup final which will kick off on May 30.

QSL winners take on defending champs Al Sadd while Lekhwiya look positive ahead of El Jaish clash

EMIR CUP FOOTBALL SEMI-FINALS

SUNRISERS HYDERABAD DA Warner b Yadav ................................46

S Dhawan c Samson b Mishra ............. 34

KS Williamson b Morris ........................ 27

Yuvraj Singh c Pant b Mishra .................. 8

MC Henriques lbw b M Shami ............... 0

DJ Hooda hit wicket b Coulter-Nile .....10

NV Ojha† c Samson b Coulter-Nile ........7

B Kumar run out (Morris) ....................... 1

BB Sran (not out) ...................................... 1

A Nehra (not out) ....................................... 1

Extras (LB 6, W 3, NB 2)........................11

Total (8 wkts) .......................... 146Did not bat: Mustafizur Rahman

Fall of wickets: 1-67 , 2-98, 3-113, 4-114,

5-135, 6-137, 7-138 , 8-143

Bowling: J Yadav 4-0-32 1 (1w); NM Coul-

ter-Nile 4-0-25-2 (2nb); Mohammed

Shami 3-0-26-1; CH Morris 4-0-19-1 (1w);

JP Duminy 2-0-19-0 (1w); A Mishra 3-0-

19-2

DELHI DAREDEVILSQ de Kock† c †Ojha b Henriques ........44

MA Agarwal c Yuvraj Singh b Nehra ...10

KK Nair b Henriques ..............................20

SV Samson (not out) ............................ 34

RR Pant (not out) ................................... 39

Extras (w 3) ............................................. 3

Total (3 wkts) ........................... 150Did not bat: JP Duminy*, J Yadav, CH

Morris, A Mishra, NM Coulter-Nile, Mo-

hammed Shami

Fall of wickets: 1-20, 2-75 , 3-78

Bowling: B Kumar 4-0-32-0 (2w); A

Nehra 3-0-23-1; BB Sran 2-0-21-0; Mus-

tafizur Rahman 4-0-39-0 (1w); MC Hen-

riques 3-0-19-2: DJ Hooda 1-0-5-0:

Yuvraj Singh 1.1-0-11-0

SCOREBOARD

d

SPORT22 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Volleyball: Al Arabi eye Emir Cup hat-trick

The Peninsula

DOHA: Qatar Volleyball Associa-tion League winners Al Arabi will be looking to pick up their third succes-sive Emir Cup when they take on El Jaish in the final of the season end-ing championship.

The defending champions will also have revenge on their mind in the title clash as the Qatar League winners lost to the Armymen in the semi-final of the Qatar Cup.

Al Arabi’s professional player Ivan Zaytsev sounded optimistic on the eve of the final.

“El Jaish is playing very good vol-leyball but we are also a strong side and we have belief in our game and think we can do it,” said the Italian, a member of the national team which won the bronze medal at the 2012 Lon-don Olympic Games.

“It was a bitter taste in the mouth after losing to El Jaish in the Qatar Cup semi-final and now we have a chance to take revenge of that loss. I think we have played a good level of volleyball and now we have a chance to beat them in the prestigious Emir Cup final,” added the 27-year-old.

“Their game plan is very good and they receiving is also very good. I think their attack revolves around (Rob-ertlandy) Simon. For us the key of the match will be our service. We have to serve strong,” he said.

On Wednesday, Robertlandy Simon displayed why he is rated as the best middle player in the world as the Cuban spearheaded El Jaish into their first final of the Emir’s Cup Volleyball Champi-onship on Wednesday.

Simon netted 29 points and forged a potent attack with Oreol Camejo and Bojan Dokic to spark the army team to

a 27-25 25-22 23-25 25-19 victory over strong contenders Al Rayyan.

Their one-hour-and-50-minute victory sealed the semi-final playoff series 2-1 and set up the thrilling final showdown against Al Arabi.

Twenty-one time winners Al Arabi had handed a 2-0 blowout to Police in the other semi-final playoff en route

to their 28th final. Both Al Rayyan, who have won the Emir’s Cup 11 times out of their 24 finals, and El Jaish had clashed in the Qatar Cup final recently, with the former winning in five sets.

El Jaish and Al Arabi Club are clash-ing for a title second time in the current season. Earlier, they were pitted in the season-opener QVA Cup final and the

army team emerged the champions 3-1, after rallying from one set down.

Simon played for the Cuban national team for five years and was a silver medallist in the 2010 World Cham-pionships. He also bagged the bronze medal in the 2005 World League.

The winner of today’s final, which begins at 6.30pm, will take home QR

500,000 and the runners-up 250,000. The best player of the final will get QR 10,000. The Inter-communities Vol-leyball Challenge Cup final will follow the Emir Cup final. Teams from India Nepal, Philippines and Sri Lanka, con-sisting of local and outstation players, are part of the Inter-communities Vol-leyball Challenge Cup

Coaches of Al Arabi and El Jaish pose for a picture on the eve of the Emir Cup volleyball final at the Qatar Volleyball Association (QVA) headquarters in Doha yesterday. TOP: Officials of QVA are seen along with officials, players and coaches of Al Arabi and Al Rayyan. RIGHT: The Emir Cup trophy. The final of the Emir Cup will take place today at Ali Bin Hamad Al Attiya Arena from 6.30pm. Pictures by: Abdul Basit/The Peninsula

Al Arabi professional player Ivan Zaytsev speaking on the eve of the Emir Cup volleyball final against El Jaish.

Defending champions looking to take revenge of their Qatar Cup semi-final loss to the Armymen

Qatar Secondary School Chess Championship from May 18The Peninsula

DOHA: The two-day Qatar Second-ary School Chess Championship 2016 will be held on May 18 and 19, Qatar Chess Association (QCA) announced here yesterday.

There will be team and individual competition which will take place at Khalid bin Walid School Independent Preparatory School for Boys.

“Maximum six students of each Qatar secondary schools are eligible to play in the competition. The best

three results of each school will be counted for the team championship,” said Tournament Director Moham-med Nasser Al Sayed.

The tournament will follow the Swiss System of play.

“The number of rounds will depend on the number of participants. It will be either 5 or 7 Rounds and 10 min-utes per game. A second illegal move by a player will mean that he loses the game,” said Nasser Al Sayed.

The QCA has set in motion the registration process and interested chess players can get registration forms by writing an e-mail to qatarchess@

hotmail.com not later than May 17. “The registration forms together

with the tournament fees should be brought by the assigned school rep-resentative to the tournament hall to the secretary of the tournament before the first round,” organisers said.

The first six winners will get tro-phies, certificates and medals in both individual and team events.

Interested chess players can con-tact:44944290 / 44944291, Mobile: 77545453 (Arabic) and 55224797 (English).

Alexei Khamatgaleev is the Chief Arbiter of the tournament.

A file picture of Under-16 chess tournament organised last month by Qatar Chess Association (QCA). The QCA announced yesterday that they will host a two-day Qatar Secondary School Chess Championship 2016 on May 18 and 19 at Khalid bin Walid School Independent Preparatory School for Boys.

Qatar’s Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah is undergoing an intensive training programme at Losail Shooting Complex, in preparation for the upcoming Rio Olympic Games.

Qatar’s Nasser and Rashid gear up for Rio Games challengeThe Peninsula

DOHA: Rio games-bound Qatari shooters Rashid Hamad and Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah have chosen two different locations in preparation for the Olympics.

Rashid has preferred to take part in a training program in Italy while Nasser, a bronze medallist in the skeet event at the last Games in London has opted to train at home.

In Italy, Rashid will take part in a championship and will face some of the top ranked shooters in the Italian Open Green Cup in Shotgun.

On other hand, Nasser is under-going intensive training program at Losail Shooting Complex in prep-aration for the Games.

Qatar’s Rashid Hamad is seen in this file picture. Rashid is one of the two shooters from Qatar who will take part in the Rio Games.

SPORT 23 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Vince and Ball in England squad for Sri Lanka opener

Ailing Federer ousted as Serena sails through in RomeAFP

ROME: Roger Federer’s Rome Masters bid ended with a 7-6 (7/2), 6-4 third round defeat to Austrian 13th seed Dominic Thiem, as world number one Serena Williams sailed into the Ital-ian Open quarters yesterday.

Swiss third seed Federer, who withdrew last week from Madrid with back pain, admitted Wednesday he had been surprised to get past second round opponent Alexander Zverev in straight sets.

Rome marks only the fourth

tournament of the season for Fed-erer, who underwent knee surgery in early February, the first operation of his career.

And amid ongoing back pain that has compounded his hopes of an 18th Grand Slam title in Paris, Federer admit-ted: “I actually thought I could really do a good result in Paris. Now, after the last couple of weeks, it’s been more difficult.

“I see my chances as, you know, as not great.”

The 17-time Grand Slam cham-pion only decided to face Thiem at the last minute on Central Court, and the Austrian capitalised to finish off an

obviously ailing Federer in 1hr 18mins.In the quarter-finals, Thiem

will now play Japan’s sixth seed Kei Nishikori, who swept aside French 11th seed Richard Gasquet 6-1, 6-4.

A former four-time finalist who has never triumphed in Rome, Fed-erer will now consider his options as he tries to regain full fitness ahead of next month’s French Open at Roland Garros.

But as for competing in Rome, Fed-erer said: “My body’s just not ready... I’m not going to go into specifics, because I’m not in the mood.

Federer said he will only be able to gauge his expectations for Roland Garros over the coming fortnight.

“I’m going to have a meeting with my team, talk about options we have, stay in Rome, Paris or go back to Swit-zerland,” he said.

“Should I rest, train, do some more physio ? All that stuff needs to be dis-cussed but I’m so happy I didn’t get hurt this week.

“Happy I’m through the tourna-ment now and can look ahead. I can pace myself. In a match you can’t really pace yourself.”

It could be the beginning of a Rome Masters fairytale for 22-year-old Aus-trian Thiem, who is approaching 30 wins for the season having secured two titles already and suffered defeat to Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber in the final at Munich nearly a fort-night ago.

Thiem admitted: “Of course, maybe if Roger wasn’t 100% maybe I wouldn’t win today”.

But the Austrian said it was still “very nice” to beat the big champion he started watching as a youngster.

“When he started, I was 10, 11 years old. First of all, it was already very big for me to play against him in Brisbane, and now to beat him, even that he was not 100%, it’s very nice for

me,” added Thiem. Later, defending champion Novak Djokovic faces Brazil-ian Thomaz Bellucci while seven-time winner Rafael Nadal plays Australian Nick Kyrgios.

Williams, meanwhile, overcame a tight first set against compatriot and qualifier Christina McHale to prevail 7-6 (9/7), 6-1 and maintain her bid for a fourth Italian Open crown.

The American world number one

is also seeking a fourth French Open title and admitted her quarter-final opponent, Svetlana Kuznetsova, who stunned 2015 finalist Carla Suarez Nav-arro 5-7, 7-5, 6-2, should give her a good run-out.

“I think it’s great,” said Williams. “Right now she’s probably one of the best clay court players out there so it’s the perfect opportunity for me, win or lose, leading up to Roland Garros.”

Austria’s Dominic Thiem gives the thumbs up after his match against Roger Federer during the ATP Tennis Open tournament at the Foro Italico in Rome yesterday.

Serena Williams of the US serves the ball to her compatriot Christina McHale during their third round match for the Italian Open tennis tournament at the Foro Italico in Rome, Italy, yesterday.

Sri Lankan cricketer Kusal Perera talks during a press conference in Colombo yesterday. Perera expressed relief after the cricket’s world body withdrew a doping case against him after admitting that the analysis of his sample was botched.

Perera eyes comeback after doping blunderAFP

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan wicketkeeper Kusal Perera targeted a swift return yesterday to international cricket after officials admitted the analysis of a doping test which triggered his sus-pension had been botched.

An emotional Perera told reporters he had suffered “tremendous men-tal stress” after testing positive for a banned anabolic steroid last year but insisted he always knew he would be eventually cleared.

“I had not done anything wrong, but I went through tremendous mental stress,” Perera said at a press con-ference staged by Sri Lanka’s board.

“I want to start practising and get back to international cricket at the earliest.”

The 25-year-old said he was hope-ful of being fit and ready to play in the home series against Australia at the end of July, linking up with his team-mates who are currently on tour in England.

“I thank my fans and the board who stood by me during this trying period. I knew I would be cleared. I am relieved all this is over and I want to get back into form.”

While Perera was suspended dur-ing Sri Lanka’s tour of New Zealand last December, his positive result came from out-of-competition testing at a laboratory accredited by the world anti-doping authority (WADA).

But the International Cricket Council (ICC) lifted the suspension with immediate effect late Wednes-day when it described the test as “an

atypical finding” that could not be construed as evidence of doping.

“We regret what Mr. Perera has had to endure, and would like to com-mend him for the manner in which he has conducted himself through-out this period,” ICC chief executive David Richardson said in a statement.

“We wish to make it clear that there is no evidence that Mr. Perera has ever used performance-enhanc-ing substances and we wish him well in his future cricketing endeavours.”

Sri Lankan board president Thilanga Sumathipala said his organ-isation had managed to get Perera’s test results overturned after hiring a British law firm which advised them to commission independent scien-tific tests.

The tests found no evidence that Perera had taken a banned substance.

“He has been exonerated without a hearing, but based on the scientific evidence we provided,” Sumathipala said adding that the board expected the ICC to reimburse the $100,000 costs of the tests and legal advice.

The ICC said it was seeking an urgent explanation from WADA and the laboratory that tested Perera’s sample. As a result of the suspension, Perera was ruled out of Sri Lanka’s World Twenty20 title defence ear-lier this year and was not available for selection for the ongoing three-Test tour of England.

However a Sri Lankan board official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Perera could be called up to join the team for a series of one-day internationals that will be played after the Tests.

AFP

LONDON: Uncapped duo James Vince and Josh Ball were both named yes-terday in England’s 12-man squad for next week’s first Test against Sri Lanka at Headingley.

Hampshire batsman Vince could well make his Test debut in Leeds, given there is now a vacancy following the retirement through illness of James Taylor.

Nottinghamshire paceman Ball, meanwhile, looks set to compete with Steven Finn for the third seamer role in an attack set to be led by James Ander-son and Stuart Broad.

Vince, 25, already has five England limited-overs caps. His batting style has been compared to that of former England captain Michael Vaughan.

The Hampshire captain has made a sound start to the season, includ-ing scoring a hundred against county champions Yorkshire at Headingley in Leeds, northern England.

Ball, also 25, has made his case with 19 Championship wickets for Nottinghamshire so far this season.

“Both Jake Ball and James Vince thoroughly deserve their opportunity, having performed well with the Eng-land Lions (the national A or reserve side) and starting the season in good form with their respective counties,” said national selector James Whitaker in an England and Wales Cricket Board statement.

“James has been a consistent per-former for Hampshire and England Lions over the past few years.

“He is already well-regarded by the England coaches in the short format

and now has the opportunity to show-case his skills at Test level.”

Meanwhile Vince, recalling his Headingley hundred, told Hampshire’s website: “Obviously I was there not long ago, and it was nice to spend some time in the middle.

“But this is going to be a different feeling...It’s something I’ve been aim-ing for since I was a little kid really. Definitely when I was growing up, play-ing for England in a Test was still the number one.”

England will again be captained

by Alastair Cook, with the Essex left-hander needing just 36 more runs to become the first Englishman to score 10,000 in Tests.

England first Test squad:Alastair Cook (Essex, capt), Moeen

Ali (Worcestershire), James Anderson (Lancashire), Jonny Bairstow (York-shire, wkt), Jake Ball (Nottinghamshire), Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire), Nick Compton (Middlesex), Steven Finn (Mid-dlesex), Alex Hales (Nottinghamshire), Joe Root (Yorkshire), Ben Stokes (Dur-ham), James Vince (Hampshire)

Hampshire batsman Vince could well make his Test debut in Leeds

India’s Manohar elected ICC chairmanAFP

NEW DELHI: India’s Shashank Mano-har was elected International Cricket Council chairman yesterday after championing reforms to ensure the governing body is not run simply for the benefit of its most powerful nations.

Days after quitting India’s board, Manohar was unanimously chosen as the first “independent” ICC chairman following reforms designed to ensure the incumbent no longer feels obliged to promote his own country’s interests.

“It is an honour to be elected as the chairman of the International Cricket Council and for that I am thankful to

all the ICC directors who have put their faith and trust in my abilities,” Manohar said in a statement after the election at a meeting in Dubai.

“I look forward to working with all stakeholders to shape the future of cricket, which has a proud history and rich tradition.”

Manohar had been serving as head of the ICC in his role as president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in line with the organisation’s previous system of rotating chair-manships. But under reforms that he himself helped draw up and implement, the ICC has amended its constitution to bring in direct elections for the posi-tion which will now be officially an independent post.

The 58-year-old Manohar had resigned as BCCI president on Tues-day in a move that freed him up to run for the ICC chairmanship, and his election had been widely predicted.

In an interview published after his resignation from the BCCI, Manohar said it was important to avoid “a con-flict of interest”.

“As BCCI’s nominee, am I not duty-bound to fight for our cause? On the other hand, as ICC chairman, I am expected to protect its interests,” he said.

“That’s why I have proposed that the post of the ICC chairman should be made independent and it has been accepted unanimously,” he added.

Manohar has been critical of recent ICC rule changes designed to

give greater power to India, England and Australia, saying the game’s three most powerful countries appeared to be “bullying” the organisation.

The veteran Indian sports journalist Ayaz Memon said that Manohar should now be freer to push for reforms with-out having to look over his shoulder.

“It’s a positive move in a way that now the chairman will not be linked to a particular board, therefore that nexus is not seen as something which is unhealthy,” Memon said.

“Having an independent chair-man is a better situation than when a chairman is president of a board. With an independent chairman, you get an independent point of view and independent perspective.”

England’s Stuart Broad and Steven Finn during the England vs Sri Lanka Test Series launch at Investec, Gresham Street, London, yesterday.

AP

SHANGHAI: Justin Gatlin’s last competi-tion in China ended in huge disappointment as he came second to Usain Bolt not once, but twice, in both the 100 and 200 meters at last year’s world championships.

Gatlin won’t face Bolt again until later this season, but his mind is firmly on his longtime rival as he prepares for his first Diamond League race of the year in Shang-hai tomorrow.

“As a runner, competitor, sprinter, you know, you have to prepare yourself for a win or a loss,” Gatlin said yesterday. “I gave the best I could give at that point in time in Beijing. Now I’m training to be a bet-ter athlete and make sure I stay focused within myself when it comes to compe-tition and I hope it will turn around for me when it comes to Rio ‘16.”

Gatlin is coming off a win Sunday in the 100 meters at a Golden Grand Prix race in Japan, but unlike last year when he opened his season with a scorching 9.74-second win at a Diamond League event in Doha, Qatar, he finished this race in a more pedestrian 10.02 seconds.

The American is coming back from an ankle injury in the off-season, but he said that wasn’t a factor in the race.

He’s also trying to pace himself so he peaks at just the right time at the U.S. Olympic trials and the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

In the men’s 800, Olympic cham-pion David Rudisha will also be looking to improve on his start to the season - a victory at a meet in Australia in March where the Kenyan ran 1 minute, 44.78 sec-onds, well off his world record of 1:40.91.

The marquee event on the women’s side in Shanghai, the 200 meters, took a hit when two-time Olympic gold medal-list Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica pulled out with a toe injury.

In her absence, Veronica Campbell-Brown will be the sprinter to beat after posting a time of 22.29 seconds at the end of April - third in the world this year.

The veteran Jamaican, who turns 34 on Sunday and will be competing in her fifth Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, faces a trio of Americans in Shanghai - Candyce McGrone, Jeneba Tarmoh and Tiffany Townsend.

The 1,500 meters also saw a prom-inent withdrawal when Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, the silver medalist at last year’s worlds in Beijing, was forced to pull out with a hamstring injury. Faith

Kipyegon of Kenya, who beat Hassan in Beijing, will now be the favourite in the race. The men’s 110 hurdles, always a fan favourite in Shanghai because of strong performances in recent years by Chinese hurdlers Liu Xiang (2011, 2012 champion) and Xie Wenjun (2014 champion), has again drawn a top field.

David Oliver, the 2013 world cham-pion, and Aries Merritt, the 2012 Olympic champion who is working his way back into form after undergoing a kidney trans-plant in September, will try to improve on their respective fourth- and sixth-place finishes at the season-opening Diamond League event in Doha last week. Also in the field is Omar McLeod of Jamaica, who won the Doha race in a season-leading time of 13.05 seconds, and local hope Xie.

SPORT24 FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016

Gatlin hopes for solid Shanghai raceThe American speedster looks to peak at just the right time ahead of U S Olympic trials and the Rio Olympics

Tokyo says 2020 bid ‘clean’ after payment reportAFP

TOKYO: Japan insisted its suc-cessful bid for the 2020 Olympics was “clean” yesterday after a new report alleged clandestine pay-ments surrounding the campaign for the Tokyo Games.

Britain’s Guardian newspa-per reported on Wednesday that French authorities are probing pay-ments totalling about 1.3m euros ($1.4m) made to an account linked to Papa Massata Diack -- the son of Lamine Diack, the disgraced former president of world athlet-ics governing body IAAF.

The Guardian said that it is “now understood that among transactions under suspicion are payments totalling about 1.3m euros apparently sent from the Tokyo 2020 bid, or those acting on their behalf” to a secret bank account in Singapore.

The report comes as French authorities confirmed that an enquiry into corruption allega-tions against the former IAAF head has been expanded to examine bid-ding for the 2016 Olympics, hosted later this year in Rio de Janeiro, and for the 2020 Games in Tokyo.

The enquiry is part of a wider investigation into Lamine Diack, who was a member of the Inter-national Olympic Committee until 2013 when Tokyo beat fellow bid-ders Istanbul and Madrid.

The Tokyo 2020 Organis-ing Committee “has no means of knowing these allegations”, spokeswoman Hikariko Ono said in a statement when asked about

the Guardian report. “We believe that the Games were awarded to Tokyo because the city presented the best bid.”

The IOC has insisted there is “no evidence” of any wrongdoing.

Lamine Diack, who headed the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) for 15 years, faces criminal charges in France over allegations that he took more than one million euros in bribes from Russian athletes and officials to cover up failed drug tests. He has been charged with corruption, money laundering and conspiracy and is out on bail.

Paris prosecutors are also seeking Papa Massata Diack, who is the subject of an Interpol international alert on charges of blackmailing athletes who failed drug tests.

The account in Singapore to which the Tokyo team allegedly made the payments was linked to Papa Massata Diack, who was employed by the IAAF as a market-ing consultant, the Guardian said.

The newspaper added that the alleged money from Tokyo 2020 “also raises questions about the role of Dentsu, the Japanese marketing giant that has an all-encompass-ing sponsorship contact with the IAAF that runs until 2029”.

It also reported that the secret Singapore account was held by a “consultant to Athlete Man-agement and Services, a Dentsu Sport subsidiary based in Lucerne, Switzerland.”

Justin Gatlin of the US.

Olympic dream, the pinnacle for Williams AFP

PARIS: Sonny Bill Williams (pictured) may have won a myriad of titles in rugby union and rugby league but the New Zealand superstar says becoming an Olympian would top everything.

Williams will be part of the New Zealand squad at the Paris Sevens World Series event this weekend.

Although widely considered one of the great polyvalent rugby stars of his generation, he still needs to earn his spot on the flight to Rio, but the 30-year-old claims that just taking part in the Games would be a dream come true.

“Coming from New Zealand, we’re so fixated on rugby union -- rugby union’s our number one sport,” he said.

“Everyone’s fixated on the All Blacks and I actually had to take a step away from that and think about what it means to be a sportsman and how big this opportunity was -- and it blows it away.

“It blew my mind away, the oppor-tunity to go and play at the Olympics, to be called an Olympian. It’s not just about trying to win a medal but to be able to say you’re an Olympian: that

supercedes everything, I believe. “Time will tell if I can make that

squad but I’m definitely doing all I can to try to fulfil that dream.”

Williams has won the World Cup with the All Blacks twice, he’s won both the Super Rugby title with Chiefs and The Rugby Championship with New Zealand.

In Rugby League he won the NRL twice, with the Bulldogs in 2004 and Roosters in 2013, while Williams also triumphed in all seven of his profes-sional heavyweight boxing bouts, even winning the New Zealand title in 2012. Yet he’s not the only successful and talented athlete in his family. Sister Niall is part of the New Zealand wom-en’s sevens team and could also play at the Rio Games.

“We’ve spoken about it, I know that if I didn’t make and she didn’t make it our family would still be proud of both of us for being able to play for New Zealand sevens. But it would be an amazing achievement for both the siblings to go to the Olympics together,” said Williams.

“We’re very proud of her and I’m very proud of her to see that she’s a mother of two and to come back and she’s one of the fittest in the side. She’s

trained her butt off and she’s played really, really well the last two tourna-ments, and hence the reason she got a lot of game time.”

Niall Williams used to captain the New Zealand women’s touch team -- a form of non-contact rugby -- so like her older brother, is a code-swapping international star.

“It’s just opportunities, the oppor-tunities have come up. She’s had the opportunity to have a crack at sev-ens and she’s said ‘why not’, and I’ve done the same.”

What excites Williams the most about the prospect of taking part in the Olympics, though, is the ability to follow in the footsteps of his, perhaps unexpected, sporting hero: ‘The Louis-ville Lip’ and self-styled ‘The Greatest’, Muhammad Ali.

“He was such a great sportsman, the way he came back after winning the gold medal and the way his career panned out after he wasn’t allowed to box for five years.

“Coming back and the odds were stacked against him to rise up and win against George Foreman was special. When I think who’s my favourite sports-man, the greatest sportsman ever to live was definitely Ali.”

Ibrahimovic closes in

on Bianchi’s record

in French LeagueAP

BORDEAUX: Paris Saint-Ger-main striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic moved to within one goal of Car-los Bianchi’s record for a French League season after scoring his 36th in a 1-1 draw at Bordeaux on Wednesday.

The Sweden international is the first player to score more than 30 in a season in France’s top division

since Bianchi managed 37 in 1977-78. Ibrahimovic put the visitors in front with a header in the 59th minute. Nicolas Pallois volleyed the equalizer seven minutes later.

PSG, which leads Lyon by 28 points ahead of Saturday’s final round of matches, sealed a fourth consecutive French title this season. Laurent Blanc’s team can replicate the domestic treble it achieved last season after winning the League Cup last month. It faces Marseille in the French Cup final on May 21.

Warriors

eliminate

Blazers in

game fiveAFP

SAN FRANCISCO: Stephen Curry was honored with his second-con-secutive league MVP award before leading Golden State to a 125-121 victory over Portland as the War-riors advanced to back-to-back conference finals.

The night started with Curry’s award for the first unanimous MVP trophy and ended with the superstar capping his 29-point performance with four free throws in the final 18 seconds to give the Warriors a 4-1 series victory over the Trail Blazers.

The Warriors advanced to their first back-to-back NBA semi-finals since the 1974-75 and 1975-76 seasons by winning their eighth consecutive series clinching game at home.

Golden State now awaits the winner of the Oklahoma City Thun-der-San Antonio Spurs series.

If Oklahoma City eliminate the Spurs in game six on Thursday, the best-of-seven Western Confer-ence finals would begin Monday in Oakland.

The fifth-seeded Trail Blazers made the Warriors work for their win on Wednesday.

Portland led by as many as 11 early and got to 118-115 in the final minute of the contest.

Warriors Klay Thompson forced Portland star Damian Lillard to miss a shot from 17 feet. Curry then busted loose and nailed a 25-footer for the clutch basket that put Golden State up 121-116.

Thompson led the Warriors with 33 points, hitting 13 of 17 from the field and six of nine three-point attempts.

Curry’s 29 points were a result of 10-for-20 shooting, including five-for-11 on three-pointers.

In his first start since spraining a ligament in his right knee dur-ing the first-round series against the Houston Rockets, he went 36 minutes and tallied a game-high 11 assists.

Curry admitted Wednesday he is feeling mentally and phys-ically tired.

In the earlier game Wednesday, DeMar DeRozan tallied 34 points as the Toronto Raptors seized a 3-2 lead in their Eastern Confer-ence series with a 99-91 win over the Miami Heat.

Toronto guard Kyle Lowry scored 25 points, including five in the final minute as the Raptors fended off a late Miami surge.

The Raptors started quickly and led by as many as 16 points in the first quarter and were ahead by 20 in the second quarter before the Heat mounted their attack.

The Raptors took a 13-point lead into the fourth quarter, but the Heat cut it to five with just under five minutes remaining at Toron-to’s Air Canada Centre arena.

The margin was down to one after Dwyane Wade converted two free throws with just under two minutes to play. Wade finished with a team high 20 points for the Heat.

DeRozan made two free throws with 1:33 left, and Toronto led by three points.

DeRozan also made two free throws with 21 seconds left and made two more with nine seconds remaining to increase the lead to eight points and clinch the win.

Bismack Biyombo added 10 points and six rebounds for Toronto.

Goran Dragic and Josh Rich-ardson each scored 13 points for the Heat, and Joe Johnson added 11 points and eight rebounds.

Eastern Conference

At Toronto

Toronto (99) beat Miami (91)

(Toronto lead series 3-2)

Western Conference

At Oakland

Golden State (125) beat Portland (121)

(Golden State wins series 4-1)

NBA PLAYOFF RESULTS

2020 OLYMPIC GAMES IN TOKYO - JAPAN

ATHLETICS: IAAF DIAMOND LEAGUE - SHANGHAI